By Diana Joseph
208 pages; Overlook

Diana Joseph is one scrappy, wisecracking memoirist whose brazen sexuality, golden heart, and hard-boiled sense of humor will have readers snorting and shaking their heads. In I'm Sorry You Feel That Way, Joseph pulls no punches in describing her roughneck upbringing, disastrous relationships, and difficulties raising her son as a single mom. Then there's the incorrigible nameless dog: "The puppy would get depressed," she writes. "He'd sigh. He'd stare at the wall or at his feet in an impassive way. He'd burp like a human burps. Or he'd shred something...a book, a sweater, a 20-dollar bill under the dining room table...I understood him completely." Make like that puppy and devour this book along with some double-stuff Oreos after a bad day, and you might live to see the sun.

— Kristy Davis