Welcome back to another post for our monthly nonfiction roundup! Look below for some suggested titles to put on hold and check our catalog for a more extensive list.
Top Picks
“Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family” by Mitch Albom
Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake the decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Mitch Albom operated in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the 40 plus children who live, play and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika’s arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, “No one in Haiti can help you with.” Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika’s boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost.
“Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving” by Mo Rocca
From beloved CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and humorist Mo Rocca, an entertaining and rigorously researched book that celebrates the dead people who have long fascinated him. Rocca has always loved obituaries — reading about the remarkable lives of global leaders, Hollywood heavyweights and innovators who changed the world. But not every notable life has gotten the send-off it deserves. His quest to right that wrong inspired “Mobituaries,” his #1 hit podcast. Now with “Mobituaries,” the book, he has gone much further, with all new essays on artists, entertainers, sports stars, political pioneers, founding fathers and more. Even if you know the names, you’ve never understood why they matter … until now.
“In the Dream House: A Memoir” by Carmen Maria Machado
“In the Dream House” is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope — the haunted house, erotica, the bildugsroman — through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
More Interesting New Releases for November
- “Acid for the Children: A Memoir” by Flea
- “Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls” by Jessica McDiarmid
- “The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era” by Gareth Russell
- “The Witches Are Coming” by Lindy West
