David Ritz

Aretha Franklin began life as the golden daughter of a progressive and promiscuous Baptist preacher. Raised without her mother, she was a gospel prodigy who gave birth to two sons in her teens and left them and her native Detroit for New York, where she struggled to find her true voice. It was not until 1967, when a white Jewish producer insisted she return to her gospel-soul roots, that fame and fortune finally came via "Respect" and a rapidfire...

Lenny Kravitz looks back at his life with candor, self-scrutiny, and humor. "My life is all about opposites," he writes. "Black and white. Jewish and Christian. The Jackson 5 and Led Zeppelin. I accepted my Gemini soul. I owned it. I adored it. Yins and yangs mingled in various parts of my heart and mind, giving me balance and fueling my curiosity and comfort." It covers a vast canvas stretching from Manhattan's Upper East Side, Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant,...

"Abandoned by their parents as toddlers, Willie and Bobbie Nelson found their love of music almost immediately through their grandparents, who raised them in a dusty small town in east Texas. Their close relationship--which persists today--is the longest-lasting bond in either of their lives. In alternating chapters, this heartfelt dual memoir weaves together their lives as they experienced them both side-by-side and apart with powerful, emotional...

In a follow-up to Rickles' Book, the legendary comedian presents a humorous collection of letters, organized into such categories as Letters to People I Know, Letters to People I Don't Know but Need My Advice, Letters to People Who Used to Be Alive, Letters to People Who Are Important but Don't Want to Know Me, and Letters About Things I Need to Get Off My Chest.

Tavis Smiley recounts the story of his friendship with Maya Angelou.

A memoir by Morris Day of The Time centering around his lifelong relationship and association with Prince.

The noted rhythm and blues singer shares her own turbulent life, in an anecdotal memoir that recalls her rise from poverty to the heights of musical fame and her struggle with addiction, obesity, loss, and broken love affairs.

"Willie Nelson, country music's quintessential musician, displays all the wit and warmth of his homespun style of storytelling in an inspiring holiday novel based on his classic Christmas song, "Pretty Paper." More than fifty years ago, Willie Nelson's beloved Christmas song "Pretty Paper" first hit the airwaves. And for all these years, Willie has wondered about the real-life Texas street vendor, selling wrappings and ribbons, who inspired his song....

Kem goes back to the very beginning to introduce his grandmother who worked as a sharecropper in the South and had thirteen children. As Kem's family rises from the sharecropping and ultimately lands in Detroit, there is an unspoken mantra of "hard things are better left unsaid," which has devastating consequences down the line. His mother is never without a beer in her hand, and his relationship with his father is oddly tense. Emotionally starved,...