Vivian Gornick's memoir, Fierce Attachments (1987)

Walter Tevis's novel The Queen's Gambit (1983)

Lawrence Weschler's profile of an artist (or con artist), Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999)

J.M. Ledgard's novel Submergence (2011)

Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, edited by Leonard Marcus (1998)

Penelope Fitzgerald's novel Offshore (1979)

John M. Hull's memoir Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness (1990)

Edward P. Jones's collection of stories, Lost in the City (1992)

Douglas Wolk's appreciation of James's Brown's album, Live at the Apollo, part of the 33 1/3 series (2004)

Heinrich von Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas (in the collection The Marquise of O— and Other Stories) (1810)

Jo Ann Beard's collection of autobiographical essays, The Boys of My Youth (1999)

Simone Schwarz-Bart's novel, The Bridge of Beyond (1972)

Mary McCarthy's memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957)

Geoffrey Household's thriller, Rogue Male

Frederick and Steven Barthelme's memoir of gambling, writing, and family, Double Down

Janet Lewis's historical novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre

Marshall Frady's political profile, Wallace (1968)

Helen DeWitt's novel, The Last Samurai (2000)

John McPhee's account of a 1968 U.S. Open tennis semifinal, Levels of the Game (1969)

James Weldon Johnson's novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)

Charlotte Gill's memoir of tree-planting in British Columbia, Eating Dirt (2011)

Ben Katchor's collection of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer comic strips, Cheap Novelties (1991)

W. Stanley Moss's memoir of the kidnapping of a Nazi general in World War II, Ill Met by Moonlight (1950)

Elizabeth Harrower's novel, The Watch Tower (1966)

Rinker Buck's memoir of his teenage flight across the United States, Flight of Passage (1997)

Kathleen Collins's book of stories, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? (2016)

Teffi's memoir of the traveling through Russia during the Revolution, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea (1931)

Josephine Tey's mid-century mystery, Brat Farrar (1949)

John Berger and Jean Mohr's illustrated profile of an English country doctor, A Fortunate Man (1967)

Yasushi Inoue's short novel, Bullfight (1949)

Kao Kalia Yang's memoir of her family in Laos, Thailand, and the United States, The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir (2008)

Tom Drury's novel, The End of Vandalism (1994)

Sidney Lumet's filmmaking memoir, Making Movies (1995)

Angela Carter's show-business novel, Wise Children (1991)

Mary Austin's nature vignettes from the California desert, The Land of Little Rain (1903)

Georges Simenon's crime novel, The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1938)

Thomas Geoghegan’s memoir of his life as a labor lawyer, Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back (1991)

Joan London’s novel Gilgamesh (2001)

David W. Maurer’s guide to the lore and lingo of the underworld, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man (1940)

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s science-fiction novel, Roadside Picnic (1972)

Natalia Ginzburg’s book of essays, The Little Virtues (1962)

Seth Kantner’s novel Ordinary Wolves (2004)

Hector Abad’s memoir of his father, Oblivion (2006)

Madeleine St. John’s novel The Women in Black (1993)

Iris Origo’s War in the Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944 (1947)

Toni Cade Bambara’s book of short stories Gorilla, My Love (1972)

Marion Winik’s collection of elegies, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead (2008)

Charles Portis’s novel The Dog of the South (1979)

Sooyong Park’s nature memoir, The Great Soul of Siberia: In Search of the Elusive Siberian Tiger

Norah Lofts’s historical novel The Town House