Books

Crystal Renn's memoir of surviving an eating disorder to become a top model. After years of struggling to make it as a "straight" model, Renn found herself on top as a plus-size model, landing in Vogue, Dolce & Gabbana ads, and Elle.

Anna is a successful New York City book editor visiting her parents at home in the Caribbean for a few weeks when she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has breast cancer.

The trend in positive psychology interested memoirist Ariel Gore, especially after further reading uncovered a rash of male experts seemingly out to prove that women with traditional lifestyles were happiest. Bluebird is her personal journey into happiness.

At the opening of this novel, a mid-19th-century tomboy named Pell Ridley faces an important decision: marry a man she doesn't love to exchange her life of freedom for a life of household drudgery, or strike out on horseback for the unknown.

Marchetto, a cartoonist for The New Yorker and Glamour, among others, details the 11-month odyssey that followed her cancer diagnosis with blunt candor and honesty about even the most embarrassing details (chemo farts-who knew?).

A black-and-blue mess of confessions in which best-selling author Julie Powell (Julie and Julia), apprentices with a butcher while simultaneously hacking away at her own life and loves.

Blogger Julia Wertz's second book of illustrations chronicles her move from California to New York with sharp one-liners and a quirky eye.

A witty first-person narrative in which Stein and Kim wonder if anything in all of human history has been so reviled, feared and catered to as menstruation

A must-read for anyone considering going on synthetic estrogen, author Barbara Seaman has pulled together evidence-based accounts about the use and misuse of Premarin.

A zippy significant other chronology in which author Julie Klausner explores the unsavory details of sleeping with a gallery of losers.