You may have heard their names — but you’ve never heard their stories told like this. Famous voices from the past to voices cut silent too soon, here are other ways of perceiving familiar lives.

Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo, Stephanie Storey

This novel is set in Florence, between 1501 and 1505. The handsome Leonardo da Vinci is in his 50s, renowned for his masterful oils, including The Last Supper, which he completed just a couple of years earlier. Michelangelo Buonarroti is a struggling twenty-something sculptor who is receiving attention for his Pietà, the marble statue depicting the crucified Jesus in the arms of his mother. The younger man is awarded the commission to carve David, an assignment coveted by the older artist. Their rivalry, and mutual dislike, is the basis for this smart historical novel. In an author’s note, Storey says she spent 20 years researching her subject, though the book is “unapologetically” a work of fiction.

The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, Michael Eric Dyson

Dyson, a political commentator and Georgetown University academic, has first-rate credentials for examining Obama’s presidency through the lens of race. He has written 18 books, all of them probing what it means to be black and American, whether the subject be hip hop, bias in the prison system, Hurricane Katrina, Martin Luther King or Bill Cosby. These bona fides have given him unparalleled access. He was granted an Oval Office interview with the 44th president, as well as such black leaders as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. “A black presidency,” he writes, “necessarily engages the identity and meaning of an American democracy that was for so long an efficient engine for excluding black participation.”

Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship With a Remarkable Man, William Shatner With David Fisher

Quick now, when did Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner first meet? Even the most devoted Trekkie will probably get it wrong. It was in 1964, in an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., in which Nimoy played a Russian villain and Shatner played an inebriated bon vivant. Their friendship, over three seasons of Star Trek, began the following year and lasted a lifetime, until shortly before Nimoy’s death in February 2015. This book is Shatner’s amiable remembrance of his dear friend, as much a biography of Nimoy as a memoir of the Vulcan mind meld the two men shared.

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Lust & Wonder, Augusten Burroughs

Burroughs’ first and most striking memoir remains 2002’s Running With Scissors, which recounts his singularly weird upbringing (mentally ill mom, drunk dad, raised by an eccentric psychiatrist), followed by 2003’s Dry, the story of his stagger toward sobriety, then four more memoirs over the course of the next few years. Then, silence, until now. This eighth memoir continues to mine his time on Earth (50 years so far), this time focusing on his search for true love (spoiler alert: he finds it). Burroughs is wise, self-deprecating and funny (sometimes funny scary). Best of all, he doesn’t mind coming across as a jerk when the events of his eventful life demand it, and they often do.

Margaret the First, Danielle Dutton

What an excellent subject on which to hang a novel. Margaret Cavendish, the 17th-century aristocrat, narrates the first section of the book, as well she might. She was the first English woman writer to see her work published — volumes of poetry, feminist plays, philosophical treatises, essays, even science fiction. Thus the title: Margaret was the first, an original, and quite eccentric. Samuel Pepys observed: “The whole story of this lady is a romance, and everything she does.” The press of the day called her “Mad Madge.” Virginia Woolf was a fan. And what a perfect novelist to bring us the second half of the duchess’s story. Dutton’s literary voice is unusual, and arresting.

Loving Amy: A Mother’s Story, Janis Winehouse

When the mother of a famous daughter who died tragically and too young decides to write her version of events, there’s a worry the result will be a self-serving exercise in absolving herself and blaming others. But Amy Winehouse’s mother has dealt with the dark side of her daughter’s brief life with a bracing degree of candour, clarity and introspection. Amy was a handful, with addictions that proved intractable. And though her mother’s account is an affectionate one, she lets us see the grim and grimy details of her daughter’s downward spiral. Without doubt, her story adds a dimension to our understanding of this talented young woman’s life.

Sarah Murdoch, smurdoch49@gmail.com

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