Adult Services

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot. Who was Henrietta Lacks? How did she live? How did she die? Did her family know that she’d become, in some sense, immortal, and how did that affect them? Science should never forget the people who gave it life. September 21

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, Jeannette Walls. Not a blissful child-hood, MSNBC.com contributor Walls’s alcoholic dad stole the grocery money, and her mother would rather paint than parent. October 19

Lucky: A Memoir, Alice Sebold. Sebold was raped as a college freshman, but the police said she was lucky. At least she wasn’t murdered or dismembered like the girl before her. November 16

Life, Keith Richards. Richards is as comfortable in his bones as a worn pair of boots, and Life captures the rhythm of his voice so effort-lessly that reading his tale is like sharing a pint with an old friend--one who happens to be one of the most iconic guitarists of all times. January 18, 2012

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home, Rhoda Janzen. Her husband has left her for Bob, whom he met on Gay.com, and she's just been in a bad auto crack-up, so poet/professor Janzen heads home to her Mennonite parents. Not mournful but funny; try it. February 15

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, Gretchen Rubin. For this chatty and intriguing little book, Rubin, a lawyer-turned-writer undertook a yearlong quest for happiness. Peppering the text are quotes from a vast array of people who have considered happiness, including Aristotle, St. Therese, and Viktor Frankl. March 21

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver. All stories, they say, begin in one of two ways: "a stranger came to town," or else, "I set out upon a journey," writes novelist and essayist Barbara King-solver. The latter theme pervades her new memoir cum investigative nonfiction narrative, a faithful, funny and thought-provoking chronicle of a year in which the author and her family pulled up their big-city stakes, and moved from Tucson, Arizona, to a farm in southwestern Virginia. The objective: to spend a year subsisting on food they would raise themselves, or purchase from local sources, like farmers’ markets. April 18