ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 A “warm and funny and honest…genuinely unputdownable” (Curtis Sittenfeld) memoir chronicling what it’s like to live in today’s world as a fat man, from acclaimed journalist Tommy Tomlinson, who, as he neared the age of fifty, weighed 460 pounds and decided he had to change his life. When he was almost fifty years old, Tommy Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous—460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change. In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight in a voice that combines the urgency of Roxane Gay’s Hunger with the intimacy of Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin’. He also hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a Fitbit and setting exercise goals to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America’s “capital of food porn,” and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head-on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take to lose weight by the end. “What could have been a wallow in memoir self-pity is raised to art by Tomlinson’s wit and prose” (Rolling Stone). Affecting and searingly honest, The Elephant in the Room is an “inspirational” (The New York Times) memoir that will resonate with anyone who has grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness. “Add this to your reading list ASAP” (Charlotte Magazine).

In the scorching summer of 1976—the hottest since records began—Christopher Norton, his wife Laura and their young daughter Faye settle into their new home in north London. The faded glory of the Victorian house is the perfect place for Norton, a composer of film soundtracks, to build a recording studio of his own. But soon in the long, oppressively hot nights, Laura begins to hear something through the crackle of the baby monitor. First, a knocking sound. Then come the voices.For Norton, the voices mark an exciting opportunity. Putting his work to one side, he begins the project of a lifetime—a grand symphony incorporating the voices±—and becomes increasingly obsessed with one voice in particular. Someone who is determined to make themselves heard . . .

Most people know Joe Pantoliano from his memorable roles in The Sopranos, The Goonies, The Matrix, The Fugitive, and Risky Business, but the Emmy-winning artist has another important role—as an outspoken advocate for smashing the stigma of mental illness, or mental “dis-ease” as he prefers to call it. As a kid in Hoboken, New Jersey, he was just “Joey Pants,” the son of a fiercely controlling, schizophrenic mother. As he grew up, Joey always knew he was different. “It was as if I was born with a huge hole inside of me,” he writes. Much later in life he would be diagnosed with clinical depression, and now he has a message for the millions of people who suffer from mental illness, and for the friends and family who care for them: you are not alone. Asylum is the story of Joe’s Hollywood success, his undiagnosed mental illness, and substance abuse, and how all three led to his awareness, diagnosis, recovery, and public activism. Picking up where his first memoir, Who’s Sorry Now, left off, this unflinching memoir will resonate with victims of mental illness and others who have witnessed its devastating effects and will give all his readers understanding and hope for the future.

Fifty years after humanity desperately sought and found a new home on Jurthaan IV, tension with neighboring planet Palnach necessitates a peace treaty as well as the arranged marriage of Princess Kylee Wen Dao to Palnach’s Prince Maju. Taren Platinum is the best—now banished—guard on Princess Kylee’s security team. He’s also in love with her. After crashing the royal wedding, rescuing the princess, and fleeing Jurthaan IV in a stolen spacecraft, Taren finds himself on the run with Kylee, pursued by soldiers from both Jurthaan IV and Palnach. The lovers crash-land on Cartiss, leaving them stranded on a dying planet with targets on their backs. To escape, Taren must repair the ship with the help of a select few trustworthy citizens from the downtrodden city of Hurren. Without an official governing authority, the local gangsters are running Hurren and refusing to spread the wealth. While Taren’s priority is getting off Cartiss and disappearing somewhere safe, Kylee believes he has what it takes to turn things around in Hurren. Drawing attention to himself is the last thing he wants to do, but his princess is right. If there’s one thing Taren can’t overlook, it’s those who threaten the lives of innocents, even when his own life is on the line.

Provides a history of Tommy from rock opera to its staging as a Broadway musical.