Bette Midler Books in Order

If you want the full reading path: A View from A Broad → The Saga of Baby Divine → Tale of the Mandarin Duck
If you want her adult voice first: A View from A Broad → The Saga of Baby Divine
If you want the picture books first: The Saga of Baby Divine → Tale of the Mandarin Duck

Bette Midler was born in Honolulu on December 1, 1945, and grew up in Aiea on Oahu. She has talked about finding comfort in the sea, the sky, flowers, and birds, and about feeling a little different as a kid. Theater got to her early, too. When she saw Carousel at 12, she later said it changed the scale of what she thought life could be.

That was the spark.

After Radford High School, she studied drama at the University of Hawaii, but not for long. She earned money as an extra in the film Hawaii, then used that start to move to New York in 1965. In New York she studied with Uta Hagen at HB Studio, worked in small productions, and landed in Fiddler on the Roof, first in the chorus and then as Tzeitel.

The next leap came at the Continental Baths in Manhattan. Singing there with Barry Manilow at the piano, she built the funny, brash, emotional act that became The Divine Miss M. That mix of torch songs, sharp jokes, and total commitment gave her a loyal audience fast. Her debut album, The Divine Miss M, arrived in 1972, and she won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1973.

A lot of readers know her from other corners of pop culture before they ever get to the books. The Rose showed how hard she could hit emotionally. Beaches made room for humor, grief, and one of her best-known songs. Hocus Pocus gave her a whole new generation of fans, and her return to Broadway in Hello, Dolly! brought another Tony. Along the way she also picked up Emmys, Golden Globes, and two Oscar nominations.

Her books feel like an extension of that voice. A View from A Broad is a memoir of her first world tour, full of backstage chaos, travel nerves, and dry one-liners. The Saga of Baby Divine turns a feeling of not fitting in into a rhyming picture book about a baby born in high heels who has to learn that being different is not a flaw. Decades later, Tale of the Mandarin Duck used the real duck that appeared in Central Park in 2018 as the starting point for a warm New York fable about wonder, attention, and connection.

She keeps coming back to outsiders.

That thread runs through the whole body of work. Midler likes people who are too loud, too emotional, too dressed up, or just too unusual for the room they are in. The joke is usually there, but so is the tenderness. Off the page, she has spent years on social causes, especially AIDS awareness and the care of New York's public spaces. In 1995 she founded the New York Restoration Project, and she still lives in New York City. She has been married to Martin von Haselberg since 1984, and they have a daughter, Sophie.