GOSSIPY, FUN HISTORY looks at the madams and dance-hall girls who were high rollers in 19th-century Montana.

GORGEOUS, TERRIFYING, HEART-STOPPING memoir of an artist’s life in flight from a schizophrenic mother’s rages.

CAUSTIC AND WITTY as ever, Roseanne Barr’s tidbits of grandmotherly wisdom and snark from her Hawai’i nut farm.

ENGROSSING HIDDEN HISTORY of three 19th-century Frenchwomen whose cases inspired modern neurology, psychology.

REINVENTING THE MEMOIR as poem, Maxine Hong Kingston invites us into her luminous and introspective life.

AN IRANIAN-AMERICAN WRITER looks at her mother’s experiences, including marriage at age 13. Moving, revelatory.