Around the World in Thirty Years by Shirley W. Mayhew, Music Street Press, 2019, 153 pages, $21. There are a few inherent perils in writing travel memoirs, of course. Some are caught up in the...

Deep Water Blues by Fred Waitzkin, Open Road, 143 pages, $17.99 . “Many times, I’ve made the long ocean voyage to Rum Cay to troll off the southeast corner of the island,” writes...

Purple Pride: A High School Coach’s Journey by Donald Herman, 2019, 179 pages, $15.95 Once upon a time in the 1980s, at a gala University of Iowa reception, a smiling functionary guided a...

Numbers are naturally uncertain on the point, but it’s estimated that in the present day roughly 250 million people are living in countries where they were not born. Millions and perhaps...

Emperors of the Deep: Sharks — The Ocean’s Most Mysterious, Most Misunderstood, and Most Important Guardians By William McKeever, HarperOne, 2019, 320 pgs. $25.99. Since it’s 2019...

From her earliest years, writes Janet Messineo in her terrific new book Casting into the Light: Tales of a Fishing Life, she knew she wanted to be a great fisherman. “I knew I was as capable...

Mr. Straight Arrow: The Career of John Hersey, author of Hiroshima by Jeremy Treglown, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019, 384 pgs., $28. Biographer, critic, and former TLS editor Jeremy Treglown...

Living Life with the Grace of a Butterfly by Shirley W. Mayhew, Music Street Press, 2019, 117 pgs., $10. Longtime Martha’s Vineyard readers will greet this slim volume with a warm, welcoming...

Martha’s Vineyard Fish Tales by Nelson Sigelman, Stackpole Books, 2019, 224 pages, $24.95 The subtitle of Nelson Sigelman’s new book Martha’s Vineyard Fish Tales stakes out its...

The Making of Nantucket: Family Lives and Fortunes in the Nineteenth Century, Everett U. Crosby, Spinner Publications, 2018, 250 pages, $27. Nantucket (that other island) is a spit of land 30 miles...