New biographies and memoirs: October 2026

The new biographies and memoirs of October 2026 start in India: Ruchira Kamboj’s diplomatic memoir, a Jasprit Bumrah biography, and a Swiggy insider’s Inside a Unicorn. Abroad, Michael Douglas and Chuck Lorre have memoirs out, and Haruki Murakami’s follows on 20 October. Here are seven, with a source for every date.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The books on this page were chosen first; the links were added afterwards.

For each book I give the publisher, the release date, what it is, and the one way it is built. That last part is why this list is on a biographer’s site. Every memoir is a set of choices about where to start and what holds it together. A family writing its own book faces the same choices.

New Indian biographies and memoirs this October

Three of the seven are October releases from Indian publishers, plus one from September that is worth catching.

1. On the World Stage: My Years in Diplomacy

Ruchira Kamboj (Vintage, Penguin Random House India, October 2026; hardback, 350 pages, ₹799)

A memoir by a career diplomat who represented India at the United Nations and UNESCO, and served as ambassador to South Africa and Bhutan.

How it’s built: the publisher describes a career told through its postings, from multilateral corridors to bilateral work. A diplomat’s life comes in chapters already: each posting has a city, a brief and an end date. A father’s transfers or the offices a firm moved through can divide a family book the same way.

Who it’s for: readers who follow how India speaks at the UN, and anyone whose parent spent a career moving from posting to posting.

2. The Boom Effect: Decoding the Magic of Jasprit Bumrah

Aayush Puthran and Nicholas Brookes (Penguin Play, October 2026; hardback, 256 pages, ₹699)

A biography of the fast bowler. He had no academy pedigree and no India Under-19 career. Mumbai Indians picked him at 19, and the book runs to India’s 2024 win.

How it’s built: the publisher’s description leads with what Bumrah didn’t have, then his rise through injuries and defeats to 2024. Starting with what nobody expected of someone is one way to open any life story, including a parent’s.

Who it’s for: cricket readers, and anyone writing about a parent who was overlooked early.

3. Inside a Unicorn: Behind the Scenes of the Great Indian Startup Dream

Saptarshi Prakash (Penguin Business, October 2026; paperback, 240 pages, ₹499)

Eleven years inside Housing.com, Zeta and Swiggy, eight of them at Swiggy up to its IPO. It is told by someone who worked there, not someone who founded it.

How it’s built: from a seat below the founder’s. The publisher says plainly that it doesn’t glorify founders. It describes the jargon, the politics and the credit that went missing. A company history written only from the founder’s chair leaves out the people who weren’t in that room. Here is how I approach a company’s story.

Who it’s for: anyone who has worked at a startup, and business families thinking about a company history.

4. Worth catching from September: A Flight on Broken Wings

Sumitra Mehrol, translated from Hindi by Urvashi Butalia (Zubaan, listed by Penguin Random House India, September 2026; paperback, 220 pages, ₹695)

An autobiography by a woman who had polio as a child and grew up in a Dalit family. She writes about wanting an ordinary life: to study, work, marry and raise children.

How it’s built: in her own language first. It was written in Hindi and comes to English through a translator. It belongs beside the best memoirs by Indian women, several of which began in an Indian language too.

Who it’s for: readers of Indian women’s autobiography, and families whose elders think and speak in Hindi.

New memoirs from abroad in October 2026

Three memoirs from the US and UK this month, each from someone looking back on a long working life.

5. One Helluva Ride

Michael Douglas (Grand Central Publishing, 6 October 2026; 352 pages)

The actor’s memoir: growing up as Kirk Douglas’s son, his films, his family and his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones.

How it’s built: the publisher says he walks through his career by way of twelve films, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Wall Street. Twelve markers can span decades and still give each one room. I looked at other ways to divide a life in how to structure an autobiography.

Who it’s for: film readers, and anyone writing about growing up with a famous father.

6. Sitcom

Chuck Lorre (Dey Street, 13 October 2026; hardback, 368 pages)

A memoir by the co-creator of The Big Bang Theory, looking back on his career in television.

How it’s built: with his own scripts inside it, annotated by hand with what he thought then and what he thinks now. A family book can do the same with a letter, a ledger page or an old school report. Print the document, then let the person say what it meant then and what it means now.

Who it’s for: television fans, and anyone with a box of papers who isn’t sure what to do with them.

7. Abandoning a Cat

Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel (Harvill Secker, 20 October 2026 in the UK; Knopf, 27 October in the US)

A personal essay about the novelist’s father, published as a book. Penguin Random House describes it as a reflection on his father and on Japan after the Second World War.

How it’s built: as an essay, not a full biography. One of the world’s best-known novelists chose to write about his father at essay length. A book about a parent doesn’t have to hold a whole life. It can hold the part that matters, which is how the gift book works: 10 to 12 stories, about 25,000 words.

Who it’s for: Murakami readers, and anyone who wants to write about a father without writing his whole biography.

October 2026 at a glance

All seven, with the kind of book each one is.

How I chose them

Every book here has a publisher page or two independent listings that agree on the author, the publisher and the month.

I left out books whose release date I couldn’t pin down, books with no publisher cover I could use, and books about living politicians’ politics. If you are unsure which of these count as a memoir and which as an autobiography, autobiography vs memoir vs biography explains the difference. November’s list goes up on 16 November.

Questions people ask

The questions readers ask most about this month’s releases, answered briefly.

What are the new memoirs in October 2026?

Michael Douglas’s One Helluva Ride (6 October), Chuck Lorre’s Sitcom (13 October) and Haruki Murakami’s Abandoning a Cat (20 October in the UK) are three of the global ones. In India, Ruchira Kamboj’s On the World Stage and Saptarshi Prakash’s Inside a Unicorn are both out from Penguin this month.

Is there a new Jasprit Bumrah book?

Yes. The Boom Effect: Decoding the Magic of Jasprit Bumrah, by Aayush Puthran and Nicholas Brookes, is published by Penguin Play in October 2026. It is a biography, written about him rather than by him.

Is Murakami’s Abandoning a Cat a novel?

No. It is a personal essay about his father, published in English in October 2026 in a translation by Philip Gabriel.

Which new memoir is best for writing about a parent?

Abandoning a Cat shows that a book about a father can be essay length, and One Helluva Ride shows a famous father at the centre of a son’s story.

If one of these made you think of a parent’s story that nobody has written down, here is how a father’s life story gets written, start to finish.