Best Biographies to Read If You Only Read One This Year.
If you only have room for one work of nonfiction on your shelf this year, these five recent memoirs and biographies are the ones actually worth the time — a Booker Prize winner reckoning with her mother, a marriage that ended without warning, a grief that arrived the same way, and two very different accounts of power at the top of the tech world.
1. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
The Booker Prize–winning author of The God of Small Things turns to memoir for the first time, tracing her complicated, often painful relationship with her mother, Mary Roy — a fierce, formidable educator and activist who Roy describes as both "my shelter and my storm." Written in the aftermath of her mother's death, it's as much a reckoning with how that relationship shaped her as a writer as it is a portrait of Mary Roy herself. It won the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography and was named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the New Yorker, and The Guardian, among many others.
2. Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden
Twenty years into her marriage, Burden's husband left without warning — and this memoir is her attempt to go back through the relationship looking for the signs she missed, and to understand who he really was underneath the life they'd built together. An instant #1 New York Times bestseller, praised for its emotional precision rather than melodrama, it's become one of the most talked-about memoirs of the past year, with a film adaptation already in development starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
3. Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Horse writes about the sudden death of her husband, journalist Tony Horwitz, who collapsed while on a book tour, and the grief that followed — both the immediate, bureaucratic aftermath and the longer, ongoing process of learning to live with loss. Unsentimental and exact, it's less about the moment of loss than about everything that has to be carried afterward.
4. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
A former Facebook director of global public policy recounts her seven years inside the company, from encounters with foreign governments to the internal culture around Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, in an account so unflattering that Meta obtained a legal order attempting to stop her from promoting it — which only pushed the book to the top of the bestseller list instead. Meta has publicly disputed several of the book's claims as misleading, so it's worth reading as one insider's sharply critical account rather than settled fact, but it remains one of the most talked-about books of the year for a reason.
5. Source Code by Bill Gates
The first volume of Gates's own memoir, covering his childhood, early fascination with computers, and the founding of Microsoft, up through the company's early growth. Less about the billionaire philanthropist he later became and more about the restless, obsessive kid who got there, making it a genuinely different angle than most of the business writing already out there about him.
Where to Find These Books in Kenya
All the titles above are in stock at Readers' Republik, with delivery across Nairobi and the rest of Kenya. Explore more in these collections:
Frequently Asked Questions.
Which of these books should I read first if I only have time for one? Mother Mary Comes to Me has the widest critical acclaim and award recognition of the five, but Strangers is the fastest, most immediately gripping read if you want something you can finish quickly.
Are the claims in Careless People verified? Some of its most explosive claims about Meta's executives are disputed by the company, and it's worth reading with that in mind — as a compelling, sharply critical insider account rather than a neutral, fully verified record.
Which of these books deals with grief specifically? Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks is built entirely around processing sudden loss, following her husband's unexpected death.
Is Source Code a full account of Bill Gates's life, including Microsoft's later years and his philanthropic work? No — this first volume focuses specifically on his childhood and Microsoft's early founding years, not his later career or philanthropy.
Which of these books has the most awards or critical recognition? Mother Mary Comes to Me has received the most formal recognition, including the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography and a shortlisting for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction.