Fictional Selves: A Memoir

Kyle MacLachlan has spent four decades being mistaken for the characters he plays — Agent Dale Cooper, Paul Atreides, Trey MacDougal, and a run of other roles strange enough to outlast the man who created them. Fictional Selves is his attempt to sort out where those characters end and he begins, told with the same dry, unhurried humor that's made him one of Hollywood's most distinctive leading men.

The story

Plucked out of obscurity to star in David Lynch's Dune, MacLachlan went on to anchor Lynch's Blue Velvet and then Twin Peaks — the role that turned him into a cult figure he's been quietly negotiating with ever since. This memoir follows that arc through fatherhood, ambition, and the strange experience of watching a stranger wearing your own face show up on talk shows and social media.

Why readers are picking it up

• A candid, self-aware look at fame from an actor who's spent a career being typecast as the uncanny
• Behind-the-scenes detail on Dune, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and Sex and the City
• Genuinely funny in a genre that's often self-serious

A sharp pick for Twin Peaks fans, film-history readers, and anyone who enjoys a celebrity memoir that's more interested in honesty than image management.