Lit
by Mary Karr
HarperCollins, $25.99

Lit by Mary Karr is a must-read for those who loved The Liars' Club and Cherry, Karr's memoirs of a wild Texan childhood and adolescence with an alcoholic father and a mother gripped by madness.  Lit takes up the story as Karr struggles to find her footing as a writer, wife, and mother as her own demons burst forth.  Half poetry, half ass-kicking Texan, Karr's language illuminates her own history and the universal struggle of emergence with beauty, poignancy, and dark humor