Texas Topaz Nonfiction List for Adults

Here are recommendations for adults from the 2024 Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List! The purpose of the Texas Topaz Reading List is to provide children, teens, and adults with recommended nonfiction titles that stimulate reading for pleasure and personal learning. Visit txla.org/topaz for the full list and lists from previous years.


Updated January 31, 2024
Lewisville Public Library
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The light we carry : overcoming in uncertain times
Obama, Michelle
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER * In an inspiring follow-up to her acclaimed memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today's highly uncertain world.<...
Atlas of the heart : mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience
Brown, Brené
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown writes, "If we want to find the way back to ourselves and one another, we need language and the grounded confidence to both tell our stories and be stewards of the stories that we hear. This is the framework for...
The art thief : a true story of love, crime, and a dangerous obsession
Finkel, Michael
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century * "The Art Thief, like its title character, has confidence, élan, and a great sense of timing."--The New Yorker A...
The forever witness : how DNA and genealogy solved a cold case double murder
Humes, Edward
Paper Book
When Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook were murdered during a trip to Seattle in the 1980s, detectives had few leads. They assumed Tanya and Jay were victims of a serial killer - but without any leads, the case seemed doomed. In deep-freeze, long-term storage, biological evidence from the crime sat...
Brave hearted : the women of the American west 1836-1880
Hickman, Katie
Paper Book
*WINNER OF THE WOMEN WRITING THE WEST 2023 WILLA LITERARY AWARD* Brave Hearted is not just history, it is an incredibly intense page-turning experience. To read what these women endured is to be transported into another universe of courage, loss, pain, and occasionally victory. This book...
Cobalt red : how the blood of the Congo powers our lives
Kara, Siddharth
Paper Book
The revelatory Pulitzer Prize finalist for General Nonfiction, New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award. An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights...
A fever in the heartland : the Ku Klux Klan's plot to take over America, and the woman who stopped them
Egan, Timothy
Paper Book
The Roaring Twenties - the Jazz Age - has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in...
Friends, lovers, and the big terrible thing : a memoir
Perry, Matthew
Paper Book
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER The BELOVED STAR OF FRIENDS takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this "CANDID, DARKLY FUNNY...POIGNANT" memoir (The New York Times) ...
How to speak whale : a voyage into the future of animal communication
Mustill, Tom
Paper Book
What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill--the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breached onto his kayak--asks this question in his thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication....
How to take over the world : practical schemes and scientific solutions for the aspiring supervillain
North, Ryan
Paper Book
NAMED A BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE "Comic book fans will fall hard for this delightfully daffy guidebook. . . . Exuberant, optimistic, and just plain fun, How to Take Over the World will both surprise and delight." --Esquire A book...
Life in five senses : how exploring the senses got me out of my head and into the world
Rubin, Gretchen
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The author of The Happiness Project discovers a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, luck, and love: by tuning in to the five senses. "Life in Five Senses invites us into the seismic shift toward a life grounded...
Over my dead body : unearthing the hidden history of America's cemeteries
Melville, Greg
Paper Book
Journalist Greg Melville's Over My Dead Body is a lively tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead. "Astonishing. . . fascinating . . . powerful. . .This clever, sensitive book gives us a new way to think...
Rough sleepers
Kidder, Tracy
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The powerful story of an inspiring doctor who made a difference, by helping to create a program to care for Boston's homeless community--by the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains "I...
Tell me everything : the story of a private investigation
Krouse, Erika
Paper Book
Winner of the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the female private...
The Barbizon : the hotel that set women free
Bren, Paulina
Paper Book
A "captivating portrait" (The Wall Street Journal), both "poignant and intriguing" (The New Republic): from award-winning author Paulina Bren comes the remarkable history of New York's most famous residential hotel and the women who stayed there, including Grace Kelly, Sylvia...
The colony : faith and blood in a promised land
Denton, Sally
Paper Book
On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The...
You could make this place beautiful : a memoir
Smith, Maggie
Paper Book
"[Smith]...reminds you that you can...survive deep loss, sink into life's deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new." --Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author The bestselling poet and author of the "powerful" (People) and "luminous" (Newsweek<...

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