Novelist and mathematician Suri (The Big Bang of Numbers) delivers a tender autobiography that unfolds primarily in the one-room Bombay flat where the author’s parents raised him. The first section concerns Suri’s childhood in the 1960s and ’70s, recounting the tensions between his Hindu family and Muslim neighbors and his humorous attempts to find privacy as he entered adolescence in cramped quarters. The next follows Suri to the U.S., where he pursued a degree and then a career in mathematics, came out as gay, and grappled with telling his family about his sexuality. In the melancholy final third, Suri returns to Bombay and chronicles his mother, Prem’s, agonizing decline from Alzheimer’s, detailing how flashes of her signature wit would cut through long days of terror and confusion. Suri expertly parallels the apartment’s combination of claustrophobia and coziness with his conflicted feelings about his aging parents (“This room that has been my crucible, controlled and tormented and driven me—how much has it shaped my history, my current self?”). His portrait of Prem is clear-eyed and prismatic, highlighting both her sweetness and her intensity. The result is a moving consideration of the ties that bind. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Historian Campbell debuts with a revelatory biography of sex researcher Shere Hite (1942–2020), best known for her 1976 publication, The Hite Report. “The thirtieth bestselling book of all time,” the Report surveyed thousands of women about their sexual experiences and came to the paradigm-shifting conclusion that “70 percent of women could not orgasm from penetrative sex alone.” Campbell shows how Hite’s early life influenced her later interest in sexual dynamics, from her Christian fundamentalist upbringing to her work in porn, but the book captivates most when documenting Hite’s relentless pursuit of her research, including her finagling the National Organization for Women into sending out the anonymous questionnaires covered “with love hearts [and] cupid bows.” Tracing the extraordinary public response to the book’s publication, Campbell unearths a trove of effusive letters to Hite from women expressing that “a cloud of guilt... was completely lifted” and men questioning whether they had been “complete... sexual partner[s].” Campbell also tackles Hite’s blind spots and personal flaws, including a propensity to “fly off the handle,” which played a role in the 1980s backlash against Hite after an incident in which she struck a limo driver. Campbell, however, notes the excessive misogyny in the press’s treatment of Hite (“How many Shere Hites does it take to change a light bulb?” asked the Chicago Tribune). Readers will find this an essential account of an oft-overlooked feminist pioneer. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Former Glamour editor Gavenas (Color Stories) offers a brilliant biography of Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics and “the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange.” Born to “hardworking people” in rural Texas in 1918, Ash married and became a mother at 16, and began working in direct sales not long after. Her ambition increased after she witnessed a top seller win an alligator handbag at a conference. When she founded Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963, her own yearning for such prizes, as well as her experience selling tchotchkes door-to-door, influenced her approach, which standardized and expanded the direct sales industry’s tiered rewards structure (including the famous pink Cadillacs for the company’s top sellers). Gavenas also explores Ash’s personal life, including her multiple marriages (more than have previously been reported) and her “campy” persona, with her “big, white blond wigs,” ever-present poodle companion, and dramatic entrances (she once arrived at a seminar in “a horse-drawn carriage as thousands belted... ‘I’ve Got That Mary Kay Enthusiasm’ ”). Yet the author also takes seriously the groundbreaking nature of Ash’s endeavor. Frustrated by the lack of upward mobility for women, Ash continually added “echelon after echelon, so that there was always some higher step,” and in the process turned “shift workers and stay-at-home moms into millionaires.” Her uniquely encouraging leadership style treated women “as though they were burning with ambition,” Gavenas writes. “Many found that they were.” It’s a remarkable depiction of a transformational businesswoman. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Travel writer Wheeler (Glowing Still) offers a granular biography of Jan Morris, a journalist, travel writer, Welsh nationalist, and trans woman. Morris, who was born in 1926, joined the British army during WWII and served in Egypt and Palestine, where the collapse of British imperial ambitions inspired her to become what she described as “vocationally engaged in the decline of my country.” (She went on to publish Pax Britannica, a three-part history of the British Empire from 1836 to 1965). After returning to England and completing a degree at Oxford, Morris embarked on a journalism career that took her and her wife, Elizabeth, across the world, including to the first summiting of Mt. Everest in 1953 and to Cuba to interview Che Guevara in 1960. Wheeler closely analyzes Morris’s literary output, including her newspaper columns and travelogues. She also digs into Morris’s life as a trans woman, including the medical care challenges she encountered in the U.K. during her long transition process and her gender reassignment surgery in Morocco in 1972, which she documented in her memoir Conundrum. Morris died in 2020, at age 94. Wheeler provides especially illuminating details about Morris’s experience as a trans woman at a time “when ‘sex change’ was unexplored territory,” though those moments are sometimes buried under dry specifics about job changes and financial struggles. It’s a thorough and competent biography, best suited for those already familiar with Morris and her work. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Bold new claims about Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer and why he painted are at the core of this exemplary biography from art historian Graham-Dixon (Caravaggio). Drawing from a wealth of historical documents, the author argues that Vermeer (1632–1675) did most of his work for two patrons: husband and wife Pieter Claesz van Ruijven and Maria de Knuijt, members of the Collegiants, a dissenting Christian movement that developed in response to the Eighty Years’ War. The sect prized egalitarian values, eschewed traditional preaching, and gave women equal rights to speak. Meetings were often held in members’ homes; those that occurred in the van Ruijven household likely used Vermeer’s paintings as “devotional pictures” to aid members in their worship. Domestic scenes in Vermeer’s paintings are actually loaded with religious symbolism, Graham-Dixon contends. For example, nails protruding from walls in the backgrounds of The Milkmaid and Woman with a Balance symbolize Jesus’s crucifixion, and Girl with a Pearl Earring was likely a baptismal portrait of Vermeer’s patrons’ daughter, Magdalena. Drawing from auction and inheritance records, the author convincingly repositions Vermeer, about whom relatively little is known and whose motivations were presumed to be mostly secular, as a painter with egalitarian religious views. Along the way, Graham-Dixon makes informed, well-researched guesses about whom Vermeer might have apprenticed with, among other mysteries. Serious Vermeer fan won’t want to miss this. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Illustrator Houghton’s scrupulous debut investigates the life of Charlotte Brontë through the lens of her wardrobe. Drawing from the collection of nearly 150 garments and accessories housed at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in England, the author spotlights a governess dress from Brontë’s stint in her mid-20s as a minder to two young children, an ”elegant, unobtrusive” garment that aimed to walk the “sartorial tightrope” between respectability and showing up her employer; her corsets, which Brontë wore during her time in Brussels with her sister Emily, and were laced so tightly the fabric beneath the iron structure has degraded, suggesting the self-consciously “plain” Brontë may have practiced an extreme form of lacing to meet the era’s strict beauty standards; and a brown silk “going-away dress gown” she changed into after her wedding ceremony—a smart, practical piece of clothing that “had been designed with her writerly life very much in mind,” the author posits. (Brontë got little use out of it, however, as she died less than a year after her wedding.) Houghton’s volume is enhanced with copious illustrations, a glossary of fashion terms, and detailed explanations of the research conducted to learn about the garments Brontë wore, including laboratory analyses to determine the original dyes and the mills in which the fabric was spun. Armchair fashion historians will be delighted. Illus. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Bob Dylan and the Beatles shaped one another’s music in enduring ways, even though Dylan initially dismissed the Fab Four’s songs as “bubblegum” and Paul McCartney once referred to Dylan’s music as “folk crap,” according to this lively debut from New York Times features editor Windolf. By early 1964, Dylan was the darling of the folk world, but had fallen into a creative limbo and was toying with the idea of writing plays, while the Beatles had achieved stadium-filling fame, but were questioning whether their aim was “to make it big... or were they in it for some other reason?” This period spurred the musicians to draw from one another in search of new musical directions; John Lennon began writing more introspective lyrics, while Dylan experimented with rock rhythms, started playing with a band, and began using electric instruments. The author draws on archival research and detailed music analysis, and includes an August 2025 interview with Paul McCartney. (On his artistic inspiration, McCartney observes: ”it just kind of comes down and you’re like a conduit”—much like Dylan, who noted it sometimes felt “like a ghost” was writing such songs as “Like a Rolling Stone.”) The result is a fresh portrait of two of the most influential music acts of the 1960s and ’70s. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this unique yet dense primer on cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe, physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (The Disordered Cosmos) calls for an anticolonial approach to science and space exploration. She argues that “in order to move forward, we must always reach back to our past and use it as a motivation and a guide.” Revealing how marvelous, strange, and unpredictable the universe is, she explains concepts like special relativity (the theory that space and time are linked), wave-particle duality (when fundamental entities, like electrons and photons, act like particles as well as waves), and black holes (regions in space with gravity so intense that nothing can escape). She blends these scientific discussions with references to poetry and popular culture, invoking T.S. Eliot to explain the concept of time, Nikki Giovanni to elucidate the possibilities of space travel, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to demonstrate applications of quantum mechanics. Throughout, she encourages approaches to science that prioritize humanity over capitalism, imperialism, and white supremacy; reflecting on the modern space race, for example, she asks, “How can we imagine leaving Earth’s surface and making a livable home elsewhere when we can’t even get it right here?” While ostensibly aimed at a lay audience—“This is supposed to be fun,” Prescod-Weinstein writes in the introduction—readers may struggle with the many abstract concepts. Still, those enchanted by the mysteries of the cosmos will find this worth the effort. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

McGrath, an English professor at Temple University, debuts with an enlightening study of how agents have shaped the American literary landscape. Through archival research and original interviews, McGrath reveals how literary agents have served as behind-the-scenes tastemakers, deciding which authors to represent and how an author’s work is presented to publishers. Anecdotes from well-known agents like Sterling Lord, Lynn Nesbit, and Candida Donadio demonstrate how agents turned the debut novel into a major publishing event, helped the short story collection persist despite poor sales, and fostered relationships with prominent editors over three-martini lunches. McGrath also calls attention to surveys showing that, as in other publishing professions, most literary agents are white, and they tend to represent authors who look like themselves (“One answer to the perennial question ‘Why is contemporary literature so white?’ is because agents are”). She highlights the work of agents of color like Marie Brown, who shepherded Black writers through the industry between the 1960s and 2024. The focus is almost exclusively on literary fiction, leaving readers to wonder about the machinations behind more commercial books. Nevertheless, McGrath’s research is extremely thorough and presented in entertaining prose. Anyone curious about how their favorite books came to be will appreciate this peek behind the curtain. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Chef Tangorra debuts with an appetizing memoir-in-essays about love, loss, and lasagna. Growing up on Long Island in the 1990s, Tangorra was an insecure girl scarred by her parents’ acrimonious divorce, who discovered during treasured restaurant dinners that food could be a “vehicle for magic.” After surviving a near-fatal bus crash at 22, Tangorra recalls having a “fire and brimstone” moment that pushed her to open her own restaurant. That culminated, four years later, with Brucie, an Italian café in Brooklyn that became locally beloved for its lasagna even as it proved financially unstable. Throughout, Tangorra writes of food as a force that connects her to loved ones: she prepares a roast beef sandwich for her cancer-ridden father in hospice; at the Tuscan yoga retreat where she falls in love with a noncommittal man named David, she woos him by preparing spaghetti limone and other intricate pasta dishes. The dalliance with David doesn’t last, but Tangorra’s culinary passions prove a constant companion, and readers who get palpitations at the thought of making the perfect marinara will savor her reflections. It’s a nourishing self-portrait. Agent: Jamie Carr, Book Group. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink