Also of interest ...

The Forger

by Cioma Schönhaus (Da Capo, $23)

This slim book “deserves a special place” among the “vast literature devoted to the Jewish experience under the Nazis,” said William Grimes in The New York TImes. Written by a Berlin native who escaped Hitler’s Germany on a black-market bicycle, its tales of luck and cunning are told without self-pity but with a “dry sense of humor.” The author, now in his 80s, believes that every survivor had a duty to experience life’s pleasures to their fullest.

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Manic

by Terri Cheney (Morrow, $25)

Rare is the book that accurately captures “the reckless volatility of mania,” said Barbara Fisher in The Boston Globe. Terri Cheney, a Hollywood lawyer, writes with “passionate clarity” about the suicidal lows that come with bipolar disorder, “but with especially keen intensity” about its unreliable highs. She closes her memoir cautiously optimistic that the roller-coaster ride may be over.

Send Yourself Roses

by Kathleen Turner (Springboard, $25)

Even on the page, Kathleen Turner’s smoky voice is a pleasure to listen to, said Stephen Whitty in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. The 53-year-old actress, once “the thinking fan’s sex symbol,” sometimes turns her first memoir into “a chicken-soup-for-the-diva’s soul.” But if you breeze over Turner’s girl-power tips, you’ll find she’s surprisingly honest about irksome colleagues and her pre-comeback bouts with rheumatoid arthritis and alcohol.

Not Quite What I Was Planning

edited by Larry Smith (Harper Perennial, $12)

There are nearly 1,000 memoirs crammed into this little paperback, said Harry Jackson Jr. in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The editor of the online magazine Smith challenged readers to write their life stories in just six words, and the resulting collection “has the same meditative charm as haiku.” Famous writers jumped in eagerly. But the no-names can be just as effective. Wrote one Nashville teen named Lizzie: “Wanted world, got world plus lupus.”

Hope’s Boy

by Andrew Bridge (Hyperion, $23)

Former foster child Andrew Bridge escaped the grim conditions of his California youth to graduate from Harvard Law School, said Dinesh Ramde in the Associated Press. His new memoir makes readers wait too long to learn how he did it. But while Bridge is withholding that part of his story, the book “becomes something deeper”: an “insightful glimpse” into the failures of this nation’s foster-care system.