Alexandra Jacobs

Thanks to begrudging cooperation from the comedian and writer, a new biography is suitably kvetchy, if a little too long and a little too nice.

Its author became a pop culture celebrity, and sometimes punchline, but “The Hite Report” helped make way for frank discussions about pleasure.

The beloved author’s follow-up to “Pachinko” features a cram school that dares to promote students’ well-being over academic striving.

“Swan Song,” Charles Spencer’s memoir of Lady Diana, is full of love and vengeance.

Fights, feuds and insults are all in a day’s work for Ari Emanuel, who offers an unvarnished look at his rapacious career in a new memoir.

In an impressive change of pace, Emma Cline’s new novel gets inside the head of a stoic businessman with dementia.

Though full of details that echo the life and career of Natalie Portman, “Life of M” remains chilly and abstract.

The journalist Jon Ronson finds metaphor and meaning in the story of one man’s baronial fantasia and others like him who are living unmoored from reality.

Julie Kliegman’s thorough biography of the transgender tennis player is fascinatingly complicated by her changed stance on gender and sports.

In “The Story of Your Life,” Kathryn Jezer-Morton explores, without castigating, the wish to present a curated version of experience via social media.