David Dale’s memoir of a military flying career, Aviation Therapy chronicles Dale’s personal transformation through flight—from B-52 nuclear alert missions during the Cold War to wartime refueling in Desert Storm and Bosnia, then flying General Tommy Franks after 9/11. Dale went from a quiet navigator to commanding the elite squadron responsible for carrying the nation’s top military leaders. This inspiring memoir reveals how aviation shaped one man’s journey from quiet navigator to commanding an elite squadron.

Silver Winner — Best New Nonfiction, IBPA’s Ben Franklin Awards

The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens is Chrysta Castañeda and Loren C. Steffy’s account of the legendary oilman’s final courtroom fight. . Cut out of a Permian Basin deal, Pickens hired Castañeda to sue. In this inside record of the billion-dollar trial that followed, Castañeda  and Pickens take on powerful oil industry adversaries, offering an intimate portrait of a business icon’s final fight and the determination required to win.

The Mushroom Girl is Dagmar Grieder’s memoir of childhood in Germany at the end of the Second World War. Her father was conscripted and has not been heard from in months; her mother takes her and her younger brother west ahead of the advancing Russian Army. Food is scarce, so she learns the forests, and becomes expert at finding the best mushrooms.

Wolfe and Being Ninety pairs two works by Donald Mace Williams. “Wolfe” retells Beowulf in late-nineteenth-century Texas, where Billy Wolfe hunts a creature that has killed livestock and a laborer on a remote ranch. “Being Ninety” is Williams’s memoir of nine decades — a Depression childhood, and a life as poet, journalist, professor, and trained singer.