CHER — THE MEMOIR, PART ONE

BY CHER

The extraordinary life of Cher can be told by only one person . . . Cher herself. After more than 70 years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two part memoir. Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center. She is a lifelong activist and philanthropist. As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship. With her trademark honesty and humour, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century. Cher: The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono — and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world famous, but eventually drove them apart. Cher: The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar. It is a life too immense for only one book.

CARSON THE MAGNIFICENT

BY BILL ZEHME, MIKE THOMAS

A much-anticipated biography — 20 years in the making — of the entertainer who redefined late-night television and reshaped American culture. In 2002, Bill Zehme landed one of the most coveted assignments for a magazine writer: an interview with Johnny Carson — the only one he’d granted since retiring from hosting The Tonight Show a decade earlier. Zehme was tapped for the Esquire feature story, thanks to his years of legendary celebrity profiles, and the resulting piece portrayed Carson as more human being than showbiz legend.

Shortly after Carson’s death in 2005 and urged on by many of those closest to Carson, Zehme signed a contract to do an expansive biography. He toiled on the book for nearly a decade, interviewing dozens of Carson’s colleagues and friends and filling up a storage locker with his voluminous research — before a cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments halted his progress. When he died in 2023, his obituaries mentioned the Carson book, with New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman calling it “one of the great unfinished biographies.” Yet the hundreds of pages Zehme managed to complete are astounding both for the calibre of their writing and how they illuminate one of the most inscrutable figures in entertainment history: A man who brought so much joy and laughter to so many millions but was himself exceedingly shy and private. Zehme traces Carson’s rise from a magicobsessed Nebraska boy to a Navy ensign in the Second World War to a burgeoning radio and TV personality to, eventually, host of The Tonight Show — which he transformed, along with the entirety of American popular culture, over the next three decades. Without Carson, there would be no late-night television as we know it. On a much more intimate level, Zehme also captures the turmoil and anguish that accompanied the success: four marriages, troubles with alcohol, and the devastating loss of a child. In one passage, Zehme notes that when asked by an interviewer in the mid-’80s for the secret to his success, Carson replied simply, “Be yourself and tell the truth.” Completed with help from journalist and Zehme’s former research assistant Mike Thomas, Carson the Magnificent offers just that: an honest assessment of who Johnny Carson really was.

INTERMEZZO

BY SALLY ROONEY

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney. Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his 30s — successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women — his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a 22-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude — a period of desire, despair and possibility — a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

DREAMER – MY LIFE ON THE EDGE

BY NAZEM KADRI

An outspoken, inspirational memoir from a charismatic athlete in the spotlight, Dreamer is the moving story of the first Muslim hockey player to win the Stanley Cup, and the impossible dreams he made a reality. No one who knows the game is unfamiliar with the story of the NHL’s first Muslim Stanley Cup winner, Nazem Kadri, nor does anyone doubt his warmth and openness in front of a microphone, or his eagerness to challenge the next generation of Muslim athletes. He is a league All-Star, a highlight-reel player, and someone who has been called upon to be the face of his community from the moment he put on skates. Nazem Kadri was a top-10 draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs, chosen not only for his elite skills but because he would reflect Toronto’s immense diversity and huge Muslim population. And he was soon a fan favourite, not only with a new generation of diverse fans, but with traditionalists too, who admired his willingness to play the game with old-school toughness. In the end, he was traded to Colorado as management sought to shake up the team. But it was the Avalanche, not the Leafs, who benefitted most, and Toronto fans missed him. When Colorado won the Stanley Cup in 2022, Kadri (by then a fan favourite in Denver) was a clutch player in high-pressure games. Today, he is a veteran leader with the Calgary Flames, and still making the highlight reels.

But the core of Kadri’s story is what happened off the ice — both shocking and heartwarming. Kadri faced brutal anti-Muslim harassment during Colorado’s Cup run from Blues fans and received incredible support from Denver fans. When a controversy arose about an uncalled penalty on the championship-winning goal, this founding member of the league’s Hockey Diversity Alliance used the opportunity to make humorous t-shirts, which raised over $250,000 for the Kadri Foundation. And when he had his traditional day with the Stanley Cup, he took it to the mosque in his hometown of London, Ontario, along with the message that the highest success, not just in hockey but in life, is a destiny any of us can choose.

JAMES

BY PERCIVAL EVERETT

A brilliant, action packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. In development as a feature film to be produced by Steven Spielberg o A Best Book of the Year of the Year so Far for 2024: The New York Times Book Review, TIME, Esquire, W Magazine, Bustle, LitHub When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.