Also of interest...in public figures’ private sides

Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks

edited by Anna von Planta (Liveright, $40)

The diaries and notebooks that Patricia Highsmith left behind comprise “one of the great 20th-century artistic self-portraits,” said Frances Wilson in The New York Review of Books. From age 17 on, the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley kept a dual running record of her life—one focused on writing and the other on serial obsessive love. Aware but ashamed of her homosexuality from childhood, she transposed that conflict into a body of crime fiction “the like of which had never been seen before.”

Unprotected

by Billy Porter (Abrams, $28)

Billy Porter’s new memoir “recounts his lifelong struggle to heal the deep wounds buried under the sheen of his charismatic presence,” said R. Eric Thomas in The New York Times.

The Tony-winning actor and singer describes being sexually abused by his stepfather and rejected by his Pentecostal church in Pittsburgh because of his homosexuality. His writing “aptly matches his go-for-broke vocal instrument.” Though sometimes arch, he “holds little back, never shying from raw emotionality.”

A Carnival of Snackery

by David Sedaris (Little, Brown, $32)

Don’t bother trying to read the second volume of David Sedaris’ diaries straight through, said John Self in TheGuardian.com. Fame and wealth had found the beloved humorist by 2003, so the life he’s recording often consists of world travel and public appearances. “Wherever he goes,” though, “he spots the precisely funny detail and finds the mot juste.” You should, as the title suggests, snack on this book’s vignettes. Until a more polished Sedaris effort arrives, they’ll “keep the appetite for delight and absurdity satisfied.”

Cokie

by Steven V. Roberts (Harper, $28)

The new book-long tribute to Cokie Roberts often features her own words, and that’s wise, said Connie Schultz in The Washington Post. “They are encouraging and enlightening,” evoking what colleagues, listeners, and her husband, Steven Roberts, admired so much about the pioneering journalist. The daughter of two House members, Roberts more than repaid the women who helped her get her broadcasting career started. “It is heartening to read such a celebration of women helping women.”