Books like The bill from my father by Bernard Cooper

On Writing blends Stephen King’s memoir with practical guidance, offering a personal look at his path to success and essential lessons for aspiring writers.

Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s poignant memoir chronicles his battle with stage IV metastatic lung cancer and his reflections on life, medicine, and mortality.

Augusten Burroughs recounts his turbulent adolescence spent in a decaying Victorian home run by a psychiatrist, where ordinary rites of childhood give way to a surreal blend of family eccentricity, escape from school, and the early years of a future author.

Lucy Grealy recounts twenty years of living with a disfigured jaw and over thirty reconstructive surgeries, exploring how society’s obsession with beauty shapes self‑image and the ultimate discovery that true worth lies within.

George Miles, a strikingly passive young man, becomes the focus of his companions' conflicting desires, leading them to search for love and meaning in a drifting midwestern landscape.

A funny, heartbreaking memoir of Joe Queenan’s escape from a harsh 1960s Philadelphia housing project, driven by a tumultuous Irish‑Catholic family and a relentless pursuit of books, music, and mentors.

In “Memorial,” a Japanese American chef and a Black day‑care teacher navigate love, family, and identity when one must return to Osaka to confront a dying father, forcing both men to reevaluate their lives and relationships.

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

A biography that reveals the hidden life of Samuel M. Steward—novelist, poet, professor, and post‑Stonewall tattoo artist—through unpublished diaries and research correspondence, illustrating early homosexual existence in America.

A meticulously researched biography of Patricia Highsmith, revealing the hidden life behind her famous suspense novels and her complex identity as a lesbian writer.

Newton Arvin, a Smith College professor known for groundbreaking literary studies, struggled with McCarthyism and betrayed his friends after a raid on his apartment.

A memoir exploring the intersection of Christian Science, religion, and family in 20th-century America.

A memoir of a young man’s quest to uncover his true identity amid a turbulent upbringing, revolving around five stepfathers and a mother who reinvented herself and her son as American Indians in Echo Park, California.