Everybody’s got a story. Four memoirs announced last week are particularly topical:

Robert O’Neill, who says he killed Osama bin Laden, has a memoir due April 25. “The Operator” will cover his career, with 400-odd missions including those that helped rescue a captain from Somali pirates, and SEAL Marcus Luttrell in Afghanistan. O’Neill, who left the Navy in 2012, was with Virginia Beach-based SEAL Team 6.

A former DEA special agent who once helped capture El Chapo, the notorious drug lord, has a book due Oct. 17. Cole Merrell (a pseudonym) is working with Douglas Century on “Hunting El Chapo.” The drug lord, who has twice escaped high-security Mexican prisons, is in a Manhattan prison.

 

CNN’s Van Jones, who coined the term “whitelash” after Donald Trump’s election victory, has “Facing the Messy Truth,” due this fall. He sees it as a way out of partisan gridlock.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a prominent Republican detractor of Donald Trump, has “Two Paths: America Divided or United,” due April 25. It considers his career, presidential campaign, and views on issues. (AP)

Reminder: At 2 today, author Howard Blum discusses a woman who spied for the Allies in World War II. Betty Pack used careful planning, quick thinking, smarts and sex appeal in her work . Among the goods she got: code books from Poland that helped break the Enigma codes. The book is “The Last Goodnight: A World War II Story of Espionage, Adventure, and Betrayal.” Details: 2 p.m. Free. Temple Sinai, 11620 Warwick Blvd., Newport News. 757-596-8352.

The New York Times is eliminating several best-seller lists, including mass-market paperbacks, graphic novels and manga, and middle-grade and teen e-books. Publishers, especially smaller presses – which rely on the publicity – voiced dismay, confusion and surprise. (Publishers Weekly)

Amazon and Publishers Weekly, two big forces in publishing, are taking political stands. Amazon is joining Washington state in opposing the Trump administration’s Jan. 27 immigration order. PW, citing numerous factors, is paying half of its employees’ membership fees in PEN America, which advocates for free speech. (PW)

 

Tate Publishing, an Oklahoma self-publisher, has closed. It’s facing two lawsuits, consumer complaints and a poor rating from Consumer Affairs. (PW)

new and recent

“The Second Mrs. Hockaday” by Susan Rivers. When her husband, a Confederate officer, goes off to war, a teenage bride is left alone to raise his child and manage their 300-acre farm . Two years later, neighbors tell him Placidia has had a baby and killed it. She is jailed. Years later, another son uncovers her story, written inside her old copy of “David Copperfield.” (Algonquin, 264 pp.)