Each of us, if we are lucky, has transformative experiences in our lives that make us more sensitive to our surroundings. For Chloe Dalton, such an awakening came after she crossed paths with a baby hare—a leveret—in rural England. The surprise encounter with the palm-size creature, which soon grew into a playful and prancing marvel that lived with Dalton, inspired her to write a book about the experience. Our starred review of Raising Hare (Pantheon, March 4) calls the memoir “a soulful and gracefully written book about an animal’s power to rekindle curiosity.”

Raising Hare is Dalton’s first book, and here’s hoping she writes more. A political adviser and foreign policy expert, she’s a gifted observer with a poetic sensibility, as when she describes the leveret’s mouth—“a tiny sooty line…curved down at both sides as if the leveret were already slightly disappointed by life.” When walking across a field near her home—in a region that’s being transformed by mechanized farming that is killing many of the hares—she startles a group of the long-legged animals that, she writes, “ran and leapt, cresting the tops of the grass with a smooth flowing motion, dolphins of the meadow.”       

Raising Hare is one of several new debut nonfiction books that stand out from the crowd. Another is Jack Lohmann’s White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus—In Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World (Pantheon, March 18). Like Dalton, Lohmann—a native Virginian who lives in Scotland—takes a close look at the world around him, specifically an abundant and seemingly banal substance. “Our bodies are living remnants of the past,” he writes lyrically of phosphorus, “the element of life” that originated in molten lava and makes up about 1% of our bodies. Phosphorus can also be lethal: It has been so heavily used in industrial farming that it is polluting much of the world while reducing diversity and nutrients in crops.

There are lighter books, too, amid the debuts. In her essay collection, We’ve Decided To Go in a Different Direction (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, April 1), Tess Sanchez examines Hollywood from the rarely seen perspective of a casting director. She writes about her humble roots in retail sales and meeting her future husband, actor Max Greenfield: “Max explained he was a dramatic film actor, edgy and brooding, and not interested in TV. My initial reaction to this: (1) Pardon moi while I barf, and (2) Perfect! Our professional lives will never intersect because I work in the shallow land of television, and I love it!”

Another debut author from the world of TV comes from Felipe Torres Medina, a writer for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. As its title suggests, America, Let Me In: A Choose Your Immigration Story (Abrams Image, March 11) draws hilarious inspiration from a choose-your-own-adventure gamebook. Torres Medina writes, “I know what you’re thinking: Jokes? Isn’t immigration this big, scary thing that makes the people on the news turn red, like a boiled ham having a heart attack? Yes. But isn’t facing daunting, horrible things with optimism and positivity America’s whole deal? It certainly was Benjamin Franklin’s whole deal. That and French prostitutes.” Our starred review praises the book as “funny, empathetic, and formally inventive.” Franklin just might have agreed.

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.