The publishing event of March 2026 is a book by a 79-year-old woman who, in 1973, was simultaneously married to the Australian entertainer Peter Allen, engaged to her childhood friend Desi Arnaz Jr., and engaged to Peter Sellers — whom she had known for eleven days. Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!, Liza Minnelli's memoir written with Michael Feinstein, does not apologize for any of it. The book landed on March 10, Minnelli's 80th birthday, and has dominated bestseller lists and morning television since [1][2].

The logistics alone deserve admiration. Allen was husband number one. Arnaz was the childhood sweetheart who had proposed before the marriage to Allen fully collapsed. Sellers met Minnelli and announced their engagement to the world press less than two weeks later. Minnelli's explanation, such as it is, treats the overlapping commitments not as scandal but as the natural consequence of a life lived at velocity. She was Judy Garland's daughter. Moderation was never part of the inheritance [2].

The month's other essential title arrives from a quieter corner. Hannah Lillith Assadi's Paradiso 17, published March 17, traces a Palestinian life across decades and continents, drawing on her father's displacement from Palestine. The New Statesman calls it "essential exile literature." That it arrives while American bombs fall on Iran and the region's Palestinian populations face yet another round of displacement gives the novel a gravity its author could not have predicted when she wrote it [3][4].

One book is about a woman who contained multitudes. The other is about a people who were denied the luxury.

-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London