Each month, Biographile sorts through all the upcoming releases in biography and memoir, across publishers, to provide a curated reading list of the month's most exciting new titles. Below are our picks for January 2014.

Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart
This moth, Gary Shteyngart makes the move from fiction to non-fiction with his much-anticipated first memoir, self-deprecatingly titled, Little Failure. Born in a collapsing Soviet Union, his early immigration to America -- and emigration from Russia -- informs much of his work, making his story not just one of a developing writer, but of a man searching for connectivity through language and narrative. (1.7.14)

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M Gates
Robert M. Gates, a former secretary of defense, served Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, he's written his memoir, which chronicles his work with the CIA and the National Security Council, as well as his time spent as the president of Texas A&M University. Gates provides a vantage point from which to view Washington D.C. from behind the scenes. (1.14.14)

Careless People by Sarah Churchwell
In Carless People, Sarah Churchwell interweaves a biographical history of F. Scott Fitzgerald at the height of his literary celebrity with an unsolved murder mystery -- coined the "crime of the decade" -- that took place in New Jersey the year Fitzgerald's opus, The Great Gatsby, was set. (1.23.14)

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead
In My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead, a staff writer for The New Yorker since '97, revisits a formative work from her youth -- George Eliot's Middlemarch -- and assesses its evolving impact as it informed her own life story over time. In this love letter to Eliot, Mead reveals the true potential for companionship with literature. (1.28.14)

Call me Burroughs by Barry Miles
The Beat Movement, and the members who founded it, have proved boundless in their popular appeal. This month, Beat historian Barry Miles will provide the first full account of William Burroughs's life and legacy, chronicling his contributions to Beat culture and literature. (1.28.14)

Tell us, what are you most looking forward to reading this month? Let us know in the comment section below.