Adults

Featured in The New York Times's Nonfiction to Read This Spring

Black transgender luminary Tourmaline brings to life the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the most important and remarkable figures in LGBTQIA+ history, revealing her story, her impact, and her legacy.

“She is the preeminent and foremost scholar on Marsha P. Johnson. . . . To us, Tourmaline is the expert.”—Janet Mock, Allure

“Thank god the revolution has begun, honey.” Rumor has it that after Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, she picked up a shard of broken mirror to fix her makeup. Marsha, a legendary Black transgender activist, embodied both the beauty and the struggle of the early gay rights movement. Her work sparked the progress we see today, yet there has never been a definitive record of her life. Until now. 

Written with sparkling prose, Tourmaline’s richly researched biography Marsha finally brings this iconic figure to life, in full color. We vividly meet Marsha as both an activist and artist: She performed with RuPaul and with the internationally renowned drag troupe The Hot Peaches. She was a muse to countless artists from Andy Warhol to the band Earth, Wind & Fire. And she continues to inspire people today.

Marsha didn’t wait to be freed; she declared herself free and told the world to catch up. Her story promises to inspire readers to live as their most liberated, unruly, vibrant, and whole selves.

A follow-up to the wildly successful What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, this collection of essays from sixteen notable writers breaks the silence on the complex—and sometimes contentious—relationships we have with our fathers.

What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About has become a rare gem in the literary world. Both a viral sensation online and chosen by Oprah Daily as one of the best nonfiction books of the past two decades, it is an essential collection that dives into the personal and poignant topics we often struggle to discuss with those who are meant to know and love us best.

This captivating follow-up, edited by Michele Filgate, tackles the intricate and challenging relationships we have with our dads, breaking the silence around these vital connections. Andrew Altschul reflects on the life-altering experience of becoming a father and how it reshaped his view of his own dad’s parenting. Isle McElroy shares memories of weekends spent tagging along as their father fixed up the homes of their wealthier neighbors. Jaquira Díaz delves into her father’s history in 1970s Williamsburg, uncovering the roots of their shared restlessness. Tomás Q. Morín paints a raw portrait of an absentee father, while Kelly McMasters portrays a loving and dedicated one. Maurice Carlos Ruffin insightfully captures a father who communicated through his integrity rather than words. Jiordan Castle reveals how we can love our fathers from a distance and Susan Muaddi Darraj explores the particular challenges of “eldest daughter syndrome” as a daughter of Palestinian immigrants.

With moments that are both humorous and deeply moving, this anthology is the second act that many have been eagerly waiting for.

Contributions by Michele Filgate, Andrew Altschul, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Dylan Landis, Jaquira Díaz, Kelly McMasters, Isle McElroy, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Tomás Q. Morín, Robin Reif, Heather Sellers, Jiordan Castle, Nayomi Munaweera, Joanna Rakoff, and Julie Buntin.

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors and award-winning podcasters Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle created We Can Do Hard Things—the guidebook for being alive—to help fellow travelers find their way through life.

When you travel through a new country, you need a guidebook. 

When you travel through love, heartbreak, joy, parenting, friendship, uncertainty, aging, grief, new beginnings—life—you need a guidebook, too. 

We Can Do Hard Things is the guidebook for being alive.

Every day, Glennon Doyle spirals around the same questions: Why am I like this? How do I figure out what I want? How do I know what to do? Why can’t I be happy? Am I doing this right?

The harder life gets, the less likely she is to remember the answers she’s spent her life learning. She wonders: I’m almost fifty years old. I’ve overcome a hell of a lot. Why do I wake up every day having forgotten everything I know?

Glennon’s compasses are her sister, Amanda, and her wife, Abby. Recently, in the span of a single year, Glennon was diagnosed with anorexia, Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Abby’s beloved brother died. For the first time, they were all lost at the same time. So they turned toward the only thing that’s ever helped them find their way: deep, honest conversations with other brave, kind, wise people.

They asked each other, their dearest friends, and 118 of the world’s most brilliant wayfinders: As you’ve traveled these roads—marriage, parenting, work, recovery, heartbreak, aging, new beginnings—have you collected any wisdom that might help us find our way?

As Glennon, Abby, and Amanda wrote down every life-saving answer, they discovered two things:

1. No matter what road we are walking down, someone else has traveled the same terrain.
2. The wisdom of our fellow travelers will light our way.

They put all of that wisdom in one place: We Can Do Hard Things—a place to turn when you feel clueless and alone, when you need clarity in the chaos, or when you want wise company on the path of life.

We are all life travelers. We don’t have to travel alone. We Can Do Hard Things is our guidebook.

Featuring wisdom from: ALOK • Sara Bareilles • Dr. Yaba Blay • Kate Bowler • adrienne maree brown • Brandi Carlile • Brittney Cooper • Brittany Packnett Cunningham • Kaitlin Curtice • Megan Falley • Jane Fonda • Stephanie Foo • Ashley C. Ford • Ina Garten • Roxane Gay • Andrea Gibson • Elizabeth Gilbert • Dr. Orna Guralnik • Tricia Hersey • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson • Luvvie Ajayi Jones • Dr. Becky Kennedy • Emily Nagoski • Esther Perel • Ai-Jen Poo • Cole Arthur Riley • Dr. Alexandra Solomon • Cheryl Strayed • Sonya Renee Taylor • Ocean Vuong • And many others

TIME's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 New York Post's 30 Best Books for Spring Amazon's Best Books of the Month BookRiot's Best Books of April Queerty's Spring 2025 LGBTQ+ Books Town & Country's Must-Read Books of Spring 2025

tender, clear-eyed memoir, Accidentally on Purpose charts a journey full of purpose, belonging, and real love--a "recipe for a life worth living" (Stacy London).

Kristen Kish never could have imagined people on the street knowing her name--not when she was a carefree softball-tossing kid, in high school working at a pretzel stand, and not even when she finally found her true calling as a chef. In those early days, becoming a chef meant tethering oneself to a restaurant and working in the back of a kitchen, not a television set. But working in the spotlight happened naturally, even if the attention was totally unanticipated. And like most things in Kristen's life, the road was so much more winding and complicated than it may have appeared from the outside.

From growing up as an adoptee in the Midwest, to trying to fit in with all the other girls who were busy dating boys, to coming out and finding love when she least expected it, Kristen learned that, unlike a map, no set of plans or definitions can dictate or explain a life. In fact, accidents happen. Curveballs will come. And even the full-circle moments--like winning Top Chef to becoming its Emmy-nominated host years later--could not have guaranteed these opportunities.

In Accidentally on Purpose, what defines Kristen's story aren't the missteps or even the pleasant surprises that crop up but how she learned to find her voice and use it. Because while accidents may be unexpected, they don't have to be at odds with purpose. And as Kristen approaches life's milestones, big and small, with intention, she realizes at those junctures--the ones beyond the borders of the map, behind-the-scenes, and off camera--are where the decisions and discoveries are made. Where the unexpected meets the intentional. And that's where things get really interesting.

From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: The New York Times, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Foreign Policy, Bustle, Alta, Ms. Magazine, Cultured, Denizen, The Millions, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Electric Literature

When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that not only could communicate but also could do all kinds of other activities, and better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation? 

Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with these questions. In 2021, she asked a predecessor of ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death, resulting in an essay that was both more moving and more disturbing than she could have imagined. It quickly went viral.

The experience, revealing both the power and the danger of corporate-owned technologies, forced Vara to interrogate how these technologies have influenced her understanding of herself and the world around her—from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen to using social media as The Wall Street Journal’s first Facebook reporter to asking ChatGPT for writing advice—while compelling her to add to the trove of human-created material exploited for corporate financial gain. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral AI experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates how technological capitalism is both shaping and exploiting human existence while proposing that by harnessing the collective creativity that makes humans unique, we might imagine a freer, more empowered relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith distills creativity and the craft of writing with a practical guide perfect for fans of Elizabeth Gilbert’sBig Magicand Anne Lamott’sBird by Bird.

Drawing from her twenty years of teaching experience and her bestselling Substack newsletter, For Dear Life, Maggie Smith breaks down creativity into ten essential elements: attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope. Each element is explored through short, inspiring, and craft-focused essays, followed by generative writing prompts. Dear Writer provides tools that artists of all experience levels can apply to their own creative practices and carry with them into all genres and all areas of life.

John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

“This highly readable call to action could not be more timely.” –Kirkus, starred review
“Mem­orably probes the intersections of medicine and human emotion.” –Bookpage, starred review

Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu­manity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John be­came fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi­ties that allow this curable, preventable infec­tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year.

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

A candid, funny, and occasionally devastating memoir of a woman making her way through the food world, navigating addiction, a cultural reckoning, and an unexpected tragedy

In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there's more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.

Behind the scenes, Laurie's life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all--from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli--while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.

As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie's mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life's work that she truly values: care and feeding.

One of TIME and Oprah Daily's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

"Amanda’s story—innovatively told by versions of herself at different ages—underscores the lasting power of speaking your truth, building a movement, and never losing sight of your dreams.” —Melinda French Gates

"In Saving Five, Amanda Nguyen shows us how to reclaim the full spectrum of our lives, replete with pain, fury, creativity, and recovered dreams.” —Chanel Miller, author of Know My Name

A brave and imaginative memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen, detailing her healing journey and groundbreaking activism in the aftermath of her rape at Harvard.

In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard.

Determined to not let her assault derail her goal of joining NASA after graduation, Nguyen opted for her rape kit to be filed under “Jane Doe.” But she was shocked to learn her choice to stay anonymous gave her only six months to take action before the state destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had two options: surrender to a law that effectively denied her justice, or fight for a change—not only for herself but for survivors everywhere.

A heart-wrenching memoir of survival and hope, Saving Five boldly braids the story of Nguyen’s activism—which resulted in Congress’s unanimous passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016—with a second, beautifully imagined adventure, of Nguyen's younger selves as they—at ages five, fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty—navigate through dramatic incarnations of the emotional stages of her path toward healing, not only from her rape but from the violent turmoil of her childhood. The result is a groundbreaking work that seamlessly blends memoir with a moving journey toward acceptance and hope, forging a path ahead that is as inspiring as it is instructive.

From one of the most influential activists (and now astronauts) of her time, Saving Five is at once a tribute to resilience, a celebration of healing through action, and a resounding cry to change the world.

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values

"[A] bracing memoir and manifesto."—The New York Times 

“I can’t think of a more important piece of writing to read right now. I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn’t anymore. Please read this. I promise you won’t regret it.”—Tommy Orange, bestselling author of Wandering Stars and There There

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.