Highlights of the Season
Business & Economics
Katie Prescott The Curious Case of Mike Lynch Macmillan Business, 14 August, hb, £22, 9781035074235
Known as the British Bill Gates, Lynch rose from humble beginnings to found an empire worth billions. Drawing on extensive research and key sources, Prescott traces the tech billionaire’s dramatic rise and fall, through to his tragic death when his superyacht was wrecked.
Victoria Bateman Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power Headline Press, 28 August, hb, £25, 9781035415779
Global in scope and beginning with the first hunter-gatherers, a “groundbreaking” economic history of the world told through the forgotten women who powered it; from Phryne, the richest woman in Ancient Athens, to the convict maids who laid the foundations for modern-day Australia.
Dominic Frisby The Secret History of Gold Penguin Business, 28 August, hb, £22, 9780241728345
From its origins in the formation of the solar system to its pivotal role in both ancient myth and modern finance, Frisby explores “with both wit and brevity” the story of the world’s oldest and most treasured currency
suggests steps we can all take to counteract such manipulation in our daily lives.
Computers & The Internet
Amir Husain
The Cybernetic Society Basic Books, 5 August, hb, £25, 9781541605718
Why the major risk and opportunity of AI is that humans and computers have fused, giving AI the ability to shape the future of human affairs.
Professional & Careers
Francis Foster Classroom Confidential Coronet Books, 21 August, hb, £20, 9781399736435
From dealing with pre- pubescent psychopaths to figuring out which student defecated in the sink, comedian and Triggernometry podcast hosts Foster lifts the lid in “brutal, hilarious and gory detail” on the indignities of working as a supply teacher.
Billed as “10 wise and wryly funny essays in place of a memoir”, this new book from the renowned novelist nevertheless forms an absorbing account of his life, from his post-war rural childhood and the booze-sodden heyday of Fleet Street and to his writing career.
Alan Davies White Male Stand-Up Monoray, 9 September, hb, £25, 9781800962576
The comedian and actor’s first memoir, Just Ignore Him, detailed his traumatic childhood; this follow-up, written with “brutal honesty”, charts his entry into the “joyous and idealistic” world of stand-up comedy.
Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer A Fine Line between Stupid and Clever Simon & Schuster, 9 September, hb, £25, 9781398549319
From the acclaimed actor and director comes the first behind-the-scenes look at the making of legendary mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, together with the film’s key players.
September
Biography & Memoirs
Leo Damrosch Storyteller Yale University Press, 2 September, hb, £25, 9780300268621
From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life; a story “as romantic and adventurous as his fiction”.
James Hanning The Bookseller of Hay Corsair, 4 September, hb, £22, 9781472159786
Cass R Sunstein Manipulation Cambridge University Press, 28 August, hb, £22, 9781009620215
Offering a new definition of manipulation for the digital age, the nudge- theory pioneer explains the ways in which it compromises freedom and personal agency while also threatening our well-being. He
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This enjoyable biography of bookseller and entrepreneur Richard Booth, aka ‘The King of Hay’, who invented the term ‘book town’ and laid the foundations for the annual May festival, is the story of an “extraordinary, chaotic man” and a true British eccentric.
Sebastian Faulks Fires Which Burned Brightly Hutchinson Heinemann, 4 September, hb, £20, 9781529154658
The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Non-Fiction
Elizabeth Gilbert All the Way to the River Bloomsbury, 9 September, hb, £20, 9781526654564
What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? Gilbert picks up her story after the publication of Eat Pray Love led to her having a “shit ton of money”. It’s a compelling story of addiction and a transformative love affair.
Brenda Fricker She Died Young Apollo, 11 September, hb, £20, 9781035907465
Billed as being “as far from a celebrity memoir as you can get”, this “harrowing and inspiring” memoir by the Academy Award-winning Irish actor is a “literary work in which intellect, madness, art and raw honesty unite”.
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner Lin-Manuel Miranda Atlantic Books, 11 September, hb, £20, 9781805465225
Drawing on dozens of interviews with his family, friends and memoirs as well as Miranda himself, this is an “intimate and captivating” exploration of his artistic journey from isolated childhood to multiple award-winner for Hamilton, In the Heights and more.
Huey Morgan The Fun Lovin’ Criminal Quercus Publishing, 11 September, hb, £22, 9781529442496
Beginning in 1990s New York as a marine freshly returned from combat and struggling to adjust to regular life, a “humorous and jaw-dropping” memoir by Fun Lovin’ Criminals frontman Morgan. “The Fun Lovin’ Criminal wasn’t just the name of his 1990s track – it’s also who Huey is”, says Quercus.
Jenny Uglow A Year with Gilbert White Faber & Faber, 11 September, hb, £25, 9780571354184
From the migration of birds to the sex lives of snails and summer drought, this richly illustrated biography illuminates the life of the “father of ecology” by following a single year – 1781 – as charted by White in his Naturalist’s Journal. A joy to read, as all Uglow biographies are.
Molly Burke Unseen Abrams Press, 11 September, hb, £19.99, 9781419777882
Disability activist Burke, who has more than five million followers on social media, chronicles her journey as a disabled woman, business owner and entertainer in this “vulnerable and witty” memoir on navigating the challenges of being legally blind in an ableist world.
Quercus Publishing, 11 September, hb, £20, 9781529447064
In 1940, Private Raymond Bailey, a 21-year-old Vauxhall motors apprentice, was captured in Northern France, becoming a Nazi prisoner of war. This is an account of his 2,000-mile escape across Europe and over the Pyrenees, to the safety of British Gibraltar, and home in time for Christmas.
discovered by chance, and the “insurmountable distance that separates two sisters”.
Jodie Harsh You Had to Be There Faber & Faber, 25 September, hb, £20, 9780571392414
This riotous memoir by the DJ and dance-floor legend, who has worked with singers including Beyoncé and Charli xcx, provides a vivid account of the decadent Noughties era of pop culture in London, from the Astoria and the Soho Revue Bar, to Mahiki and The End.
Penny Lancaster Someone Like Me Bloomsbury, 25 September, hb, £20, 9781526686978
Rachel Trethewey Muv The History Press, 18 September, hb, £22.99, 9781803997803
The story of the “seventh Mitford woman” – the sisters’ mother Sydney Redesdale – “told in full for the first time”.
Priscilla Presley Softly, As I Leave You Headline Book Publishing, 23 September, hb, £25, 9781035421633
In the wake of Sofia Coppola’s 2023 film about her life, and in her first book since 1985, the author and actress chronicles her “difficult, inspiring” journey beyond the walls of Graceland after her divorce from Elvis, and reveals how she built a life of her own.
Nigel Planer Young Once John Murray, 25 September, hb, £22, 9781399826693
“Hilarious and heart- warming” memoir by the actor and comedian best known for playing Neil in The Young Ones. Planer takes us back through the roles, the friendships and the rivalries, the triumphs and the comic disasters that have brought him where he is today.
Annie Ernaux, Alison L Strayer (trans) The Other Girl Fitzcarraldo Editions, 25 September, pb, £10.99, 9781804271841
Ray Bailey, David Wilkins The Longest Walk Home
Translated into English for the first time, this non-fiction work by the renowned Ernaux explores the meaning of a family secret, one only
This “emotional, honest and gutsy” memoir by Mrs Rod Stewart not only covers her life with Rod and uniting a family that includes five different mothers and eight children, but also addresses serious women’s issues I’m told, including consent and women’s safety, drawing on her work as a special constable for the City of London Police, where her main concern is making the streets safer for young women.
Lulu
If Only You Knew Hodder & Stoughton, 25 September, hb, £25, 9781399744249
“Hear her roar”: from the tenements of Glasgow to the Royal Albert Hall and Hollywood, the pop legend looks back over her life in this “relatable, vulnerable and honest” memoir in which Lulu “finds her voice as never before” and opens up about her addiction for the first time.
Jen Hatmaker Awake Bluebird, 25 September, hb, £18.99, 9781035081929
In 2020, US author Hatmaker woke up one morning to find her husband of 26 years voice-texting his girlfriend in bed next to her. This is her powerful memoir of the end of her marriage, and how she rebuilt a life after divorce, challenging the oppressive rules of her patriarchal church community in the process.
Lionel Richie Truly William Collins, 30 September, hb, £25, 9780008752323
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