1. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (Random House)

After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa condemned Rushdie to death and forced him into hiding, the writer lived in the United States for more than two decades, unharmed until he was stabbed repeatedly by a 24-year-old New Jersey man who rushed the stage in idyllic Chautauqua, New York, where, prophetically, Rushdie was to speak about threats to writers. Knife wounds severed tendons and nerves in his neck and left hand; worst of all, the blade sliced his optic nerve, depriving him of his vision in one eye. Rushdie powerfully recounts in detail the harrowing attack and its tolls – the arduous rehab and psychological recovery. His attacker is unnamed, which makes one part of his memoir – his imagined dialogue with this would-be assassin – particularly forceful.

2. Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch (Harper)

Haring’s exuberance infuses Gooch’s wonderfully rich biography of the global artist, raised in an insular Pennsylvania town, who went everywhere with a magic marker and drew distinctive images in a continuous line. “His radiant baby was a trademark, a brand,” notes Gooch, “yet also a warm compress of meaning that established his key signature.” Haring transcended the line between high fine art and colloquial street art and believed in “art for everybody.” Through extensive interviews, Gooch vividly evokes downtown Manhattan of the tumultuous 1980s, capturing Haring’s contemporaries like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol and their world. When Haring dies from complications of HIV/AIDS at just 31, readers feel as though they really knew him and his distinctive art.

3. Most Fortunate Unfortunates: The Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans by Marlene Trestman (Louisiana State University Press)

In her evocative account, Trestman recovers a part of New Orleans’ vibrant history and the Jewish community’s determination to care for its needy through its orphans at what was declared to be a “Magnificent Monument to Hebrew Benevolence.” Founded in 1853 in the wake of a yellow fever epidemic, the Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans established the prestigious, nonsectarian, coed Isidore Newman School before closing its doors in 1946. Through her deep archival research and nearly 150 interviews, as well as oral histories from alums, descendants and those involved with the Home, Trestman provides essential context to her narrative as she charts the evolving principles of childcare over the decades with nuance and insight.

4. Far From the Rooftop of the World: Travels Among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents by Amy Yee, Foreword by His Holiness The Dalai Lama (University of North Carolina Press)

In her remarkable book, journalist Yee documents the experiences of a set of Tibetans in exile. As a reporter for the Financial Times in India, Yee landed in Dharamsala, a haven for the Dalai Lama and about 12,000 Tibetans in exile, where she was spurred to braid together personal stories of expatriation, spanning the globe from India and Australia to Belgium and the U.S. Over 14 years Yee followed this set of Tibetans, drawing intimate portraits of them in everyday life. As they recognized authoritarian repression intensifying in China, Tibetans around the world grew more committed to preservation of their religion, culture, language and identity that were so imperiled in their homeland.

5. The Best You Can Do: Stories by Amina Gautier (Soft Skull Press)

In her kaleidoscopic collection, Gautier gathers very brief stories – some just two pages, regarded perhaps as “micro’’ or “flash” fiction – that showcase her protean talents. These nearly 60 shards are set in places as different as Lisbon, Menlo Park and Philadelphia, most time-stamped in the 1970s and ’80s with references to TV shows like The Love Boat and The Jeffersons. Through the prism of Puerto Rican and Black kids and their mothers, Gautier captures their struggles against dislocation, discrimination, violence and the quotidian parts of life with her distinctive wit, style and wisdom.