8 Fabulous New Nonfiction Books to Add to Your TBR in October

Sinclair grew up with a father who was part of a strict sect of Rastafari, and he eventually became obsessed with maintaining her and her sisters’ purity from Babylon or the outside influence of the world around them. For him, the highest virtue was obedience, and the family followed strict rules. While her mother stayed loyal to her father, she also gave the girls books, and for Sinclair, this was a lifeline that eventually empowered her to keep speaking up and to break free. This is a memoir of coming to terms with one’s culture and facing what it means to follow tradition; a memoir of discovering strength and exploring history and colonialism — all told in iron-strong poetic prose.

I don’t know about you, but as a hiker, the only time I think about bears is when I think about how much I do not want to see one — please and thank you. But this book might change that. Searles, also known as “the Bear Whisperer” on Animal Planet, has written a compelling story about being hired by the town of Mammoth Lakes, CA, as a hunter to help cull the bear population, but he soon started thinking about alternative, non-lethal ways to control the bear population. Despite his lack of formal education, his techniques slowly became effective and changed the way we handle American black bears — but not everyone was so eager to accept this. This is a book not merely about bears but about our relationship with the natural world and about how wisdom and expertise aren’t always what we expect.

In this blend of memoir and investigative reporting, Clarren explores her family history and their ties to their homestead in South Dakota. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their children fled Russia amidst antisemitism and came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. They settled in South Dakota on 160 acres of land, and family lore has them as a success story — but what no one spoke of was that by the time the Sinykins came to the U.S., the U.S. government had broken treaties that reserved land for bands of the Lakota, and instead gave the land to white settlers — including the Sinykins. Clarren explores the cycles of oppression, trauma, and displacement, braiding the stories of her ancestors with those of the Lakota, and grapples with what it means that her ancestors benefitted from oppression and harm done to others and how this cycle still occurs today.

Thrall writes a propulsive story about a 5-year-old, Milad Salama, who sets off one morning, excited for a field trip to a theme park right outside Jerusalem. But his bus collides with a semitrailer on the way. When his father, Abed, finds out, he rushes to the scene and finds absolute chaos: kids are being taken to various hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank, there are missing children, problems with identifying kids, and different stories being told. What follows is a kaleidoscope of the aftermath of a tragedy, told from different viewpoints, with multiple lives coming together, and the tragedy made even more difficult because of obstacles Abed and others face because they are Palestinian. This is an immersive story of an event, with its aftershocks reverberating for years.

If you’re like most people, you probably are unfamiliar with the term “twice exceptional.” Twice exceptional refers to gifted children who also have one or more clinically diagnosed learning disabilities or diagnoses, like dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, Autism, apraxia of speech, etc. Too often, the educational system focuses on what they perceive as “deficits” while ignoring the gifted diagnosis or potential diagnosis, leaving these students in a no-mans-land. Skolnick offers a strengths-based, non-ableist way to empower your child, advocate for and with them, and get them what they need in school (or out of school) to thrive.

Detroit in the 1980s was pretty rough, but Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine brought people together, no matter what their background or who they were. Curtis Chin, filmmaker and activist, grew up here — this restaurant was his family’s restaurant, and it is here that he learned how to truly embrace himself as a “gay ABC,” or American-born Chinese. He writes about all of this in this touching memoir, which is structured around the menu. This book is a love letter to family and to finding oneself and is a great cozy read. (Just don’t read it on an empty stomach!)