Pretty Is What Changes (2008)

In this inspiring memoir, Pretty Is What Changes, TV writer Jessica Queller (Gossip Girl) intertwines her mother's death from ovarian cancer with her own story of testing positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation that leaves her with an up-to-87 percent chance of developing breast cancer. The Hollywood dish is fascinating, as when Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino asks her then writer, ''Can't you just dip your boobs in green tea?'' But ultimately, the book's power rests in Queller's brutally honest account of going from disbelief (tucking away her results for three months) to action (getting a preemptive double mastectomy). A-