12 upcoming non-fiction books to look out for, from memoirs to social studies

NEW YORK – Publishers like to save their buzziest non-fiction for autumn, probably because it is holiday shopping season. The 2025 line-up includes celebrity memoirs, secret Nazi histories, Renaissance biographies, a prismatic group of true-crime offerings and immersive reporting on social movements past and present.

Memoir

Mother Mary Comes To Me
By Arundhati Roy
Scribner, Sept 2

Arundhati Roy, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The God Of Small Things, channels warmth, moral clarity and a sweeping bird’s-eye view of modern India to tell her life story, which was shaped by poverty, violence, political upheaval and – most of all – the volatile single mother who raised her.

All The Way To The River: Love, Loss, And Liberation
By Elizabeth Gilbert
Riverhead, Sept 9

The Eat Pray Love author returns with a love story about her relationship with Rayya Elias, her friend-turned-soulmate. Elias’ terminal cancer diagnosis brought the two together, while simultaneously sending them spiralling into addiction. Elizabeth Gilbert told People magazine that All The Way To The River will plumb “the darker side of that spiritual, emotional and physical hunger” of her first memoir, “and how lost we can become in the endless search for connection and satisfaction”.

The Book Of Sheen
By Charlie Sheen
Gallery Books, Sept 9

Since his youth, Charlie Sheen has been caught in the public eye, whether because of his father, actor Martin Sheen, his role in television series Two And A Half Men (2003 to 2015) or his highly publicised divorces and struggles with drug use. This memoir is an attempt to reclaim his narrative, he said in a statement. “It’s time to finally read these stories directly from the actual guy.”

Truly
By Lionel Richie
HarperOne, Sept 30

The superstar soul singer revisits his greatest hits and most formative challenges, from humble beginnings as a late bloomer in civil-rights-era Tuskegee, Alabama, to his rollicking years touring with the Commodores to his current role as a kingmaker on American Idol.

Book Of Lives: A Memoir Of Sorts
By Margaret Atwood
Doubleday, Nov 4

When her publishers approached Margaret Atwood, the writer best known for her 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, they asked for a “memoir in a literary style”. She creates a through line from her own unconventional life to the lasting cultural impact of her books.

Family Of Spies: A World War II Story Of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, And The Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor

By Christine Kuehn
Celadon, Nov 25

With all the trappings of a Le Carre spy thriller, Kuehn’s deeply researched history tells the story of her grandfather Otto Kuehn, patriarch of a Berlin family sent to Honolulu to spy for the Nazis.

After the Kuehns began feeding information about US Navy ships to the Japanese from their cottage overlooking Pearl Harbor, well, you know what happened next. But Kuehn, who learnt about her grandfather’s involvement only as an adult, takes the reader along with her as she uncovers this family secret.

Biography

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times And Fatal Genius Of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival
By Stephen Greenblatt
Norton, Sept 9

The popular Elizabethan scholar’s newest biography focuses on 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe.

Greenblatt immerses readers in provincial Canterbury, Cambridge’s secret Catholic cells, the Tower of London’s torture chamber and more to paint a detailed portrait of one of the most consequential figures of the English Renaissance.

Science

Replaceable You: Adventures In Human Anatomy
By Mary Roach
Norton, Sept 16

In her latest dispatch, Roach, a rigorous chronicler of pop science curiosities, turns her gaze towards the growing field of replacement parts and prosthetics, from the vital (organs and limbs) to the convenient (noses and toes). Think pig organs, printed kidneys and hair nurseries.

True crime

The Tragedy Of True Crime: Four Guilty Men And The Stories That Define Us
By John J. Lennon
Celadon, Sept 23

Lennon, a convicted murderer, began taking creative writing classes behind bars and interviewing fellow prisoners on his cell block.

The result is a nuanced biography of three high-profile killers, braided with Lennon’s reflections on the choices and circumstances that led he himself to violence and a scathing criticism of the media ecosystem that launders tragedy into entertainment.

Social science

When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge And The Mysteries Of Money, Power, And Everyday Life
By Steven Pinker
Scribner, Sept 23

What do nervous phone calls between lovers, toilet paper hoarding, political protests and election polling have in common? They are, according to Pinker’s latest book, examples of how people’s “mutual knowledge” conditions the decisions they make in both small and major ways.

Girls Play Dead: Acts Of Self-Preservation
By Jen Percy
Doubleday, Nov 11

Percy, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, draws on original reporting, interviews with survivors and her own personal experience to explain how unexpected responses to sexual assault, which are often misread as signs of consent, are instead acts of survival.

Tech

Ensh**tification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse And What to Do About It
By Cory Doctorow
MCD, Oct 7

The eponymous term of Doctorow’s book, which he coined in a 2022 blog post, has become a widely adopted descriptor for the rapid decay of online platforms from Google to Facebook.

He expands his thesis to diagnose the business decisions that led to this phenomenon and offers suggestions on how the damage can be undone.

Also out this autumn

Dead Center: In Defense Of Common Sense by Senator Joe Manchin; The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side Of the American Founding by Joseph J. Ellis; Joyride by Susan Orlean; Sister Wife: A Memoir Of Faith, Family, And Finding Freedom by Christine Brown Woolley; History Matters by David McCullough; Art Work: On The Creative Life by Sally Mann; and Poems & Prayers, by Matthew McConaughey.