Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette ’13 (FSG)
In this debut we meet women who, after their convent is abruptly shuttered, work in a halfway house nicknamed Little Neon (due to its glowing green paint job) where they attempt, and mostly fail, to help the homeless and addicted. Nudging the question of why someone would join a religious order, this is also the story of protagonist Agatha’s realization that what she wants might lie far beyond what she has already found.

First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents by Gary Ginsberg ’84 (Twelve)
In nine anecdote-laden chapters, Ginsberg, a journalist, media executive, and Clinton administration veteran who writes with a quick, engaging voice, details the below-the-radar influence of a range of first friends: for Bill Clinton it was Vernon Jordan; for Richard Nixon, Bebe Rebozo; for Woodrow Wilson, Edward Mandell House; for Franklin Pierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne; and for Thomas Jefferson it was James Madison.

Variations on the Body by María Ospina ’99, translated by Heather Cleary (Coffee House)
Throughout these six intimate, vivid stories about women in Bogotá in the early 2000s you’ll find love, pain, and humor. They include a former guerilla fighter struggling with an editor’s recasting of her memoir as she works the register at a superstore, a woman developing a tic while keeping a tally of each night’s flea bites, and a widow trying to quell the grief of losing her husband with mani-pedis and waxing. 

Alumni Nonfiction

Ugly Freedoms by Elisabeth Anker ’97 (Duke)

How to Understand Art by Janetta Rebold Benton ’81 PhD (Thames & Hudson)

The First Ten Letters: Secrets of the Universe Hiding in Plain Sight by Raffi Bilek ’03 (Mosaica)

Life-Destroying Diagrams by Eugenie Brinkema ’10 PhD (Duke)

A Cultural Arsenal for Democracy: The World War II Work of U.S. Museums by Clarissa J. Ceglio ’09 AM, ’15 PhD (University of Massachusetts)

I Was Never Here by Andrew Kirsch ’02 (Page Two)

Welcome to the Grief Club by Janine Kwoh ’09 (Workman)

Reproduction Reconceived: Family Making and the Limits of Choice After Roe v. Wade by Sara Matthiesen ’11AM, ’16 PhD (UC)

Hereafter Knowing in Sonnets and Their Similars by Robert Mueller ’89 AM ’95 PhD (Lexington)

Closing the Golden Door: Asian Migration and the Hidden History of Exclusion at Ellis Island by Anna Pegler-Gordon ’95 AM (University of North Carolina)

No Boundaries: 25 Women Explorers and Scientists Share Adventures, Inspiration, and Advice by Gabby Salazar ’09 (National Geographic Kids)

Hip Hop Genius 2.0 by Sam Seidel ’02 (Rowman & Littlefield)

The Very Last Interview by David Shields ’78 (New York Review)

Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus by Maia Weinstock ’99 (MIT)
 

Alumni Fiction

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez ’99 (Flatiron)

One Rainy Season in Yunnan by Brian Herman ’02 (BookBaby)

Mirror Girls by Kelly McWilliams ’10 (Little, Brown and Company)
 

Alumni Audiobooks

So You Need to Decide by Beth Lapides ’78 (Recirded)
 

Independently Published

Wellsprings of Work: Surprising Sources of Meaning and Motivation in Work by Samuel Halpern ’72