1. Irving Berlin: New York Genius by James Kaplan (Yale University Press)

The transformation of the Lower East Side’s Izzy Baline, son of an itinerant cantor from Eastern Europe, into Irving Berlin, the prolific, brilliant composer of music and lyrics who came to personify American popular song, is part of Kaplan’s short but robust and richly rewarding biography. Kaplan vivifies Berlin and traces the arc of his long marriage and friendships with other American icons such as Harold Arlen and Fred Astaire, while keying in how Berlin’s music was informed by the Depression and wars of the 20th century. Kaplan, author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman, the definitive two-volume biography of Frank Sinatra, brings his deep knowledge and wise insight to Berlin’s life story so that even his most classic songs like “White Christmas” feel like a new discovery.

2. Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir by Deirdre Bair (Nan A. Talese)

The fascinating, vexing relationship between biographers and their subjects is the focus of Bair’s memoir, in which she details her 15 years in Paris writing about Beckett and de Beauvoir. Bair won the National Book Award for her Beckett biography, and though it was not an easy process, she continued as a biographer beyond her Paris years, writing about Anais Nin, Carl Jung, and, most recently, Al Capone. Bair’s disarmingly candid reports of being flummoxed about how to write a biography, the ruthless criticism by “Becketteers” who charged she traded sex for access, and the Lucite curtain dropped by de Beauvoir on topics not to her liking are deliciously engaging, but most enduring is her honesty about her self-doubt, her long years of rewriting, and her remarkable determination to write great biography.

3. Dictionary of the Undoing by John Freeman, with an Afterword by Valeria Luiselli (MCD)

From “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman attempts to “build a lexicon of engagement and meaning in a time and media age that has made a mockery of those forces in our lives.” With the alphabet as an organizing principle, his smart, inspiring 26 essays form a handbook and manifesto for the resistance. Editor of Freeman’s literary journal, executive editor of the Literary Hub, past editor of Granta, and writer-in-residence at New York University, Freeman goes letter by letter, and for “F,” rather than “freedom” or even “Freeman,” he chooses “Fair”: The word fair is like a mirror we think is a window – instead of looking through it at the world and all its phenomena, we peer back at ourselves. What do we see?

4. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf)

In what could have been a simple recounting of the pain of an abusive relationship with a former girlfriend, Machado breathes new life into the memoir form. Machado, who challenged the boundaries of comedy and horror, realism and science fiction, and fantasy in her National Book Award finalist Her Body and Other Parties, bucks the constraints of convention in her memoir with different storytelling modes – from second person, to unreliable narrators, to even a choose-your-own adventure. In sly, smart chapter headings like “Dream House as Inner Sanctum” and “Dream House as Sanctuary,” she twists her narrative lens in a way that propels the story and raises interest in the dynamics and history of domestic abuse between queer women.

5. The Accomplice by Joseph Kanon (Atria)

In this engrossing novel, Max, an Auschwitz survivor turned Nazi hunter, enlists his nephew Aaron, a CIA desk agent, to pursue his tormentor, who he believes is not dead but rather living well in South America. With links to the Joseph Mengele story, Kanon’s novel does more than rip a tale from the annals of history, but rather tells a suspenseful story of intrigue and moral complexity that raises questions of complicity. As Max is haunted by his role in the horrific demise of others at the camp, his nephew finds himself enthralled with the Nazi’s daughter, who is coming to terms with her father’s evil in this anti-Semitic community in South America.