By April Sinclair. In this anthology twenty-nine writers address the challenges and rewards of growing older as a single woman: sex, loneliness, motherhood, learning to live alone (and happily), financial struggles, blossoming careers, menopause, and more. April Sinclair shares her essay “Straight Outta Marin.” Read the excerpt here.

By William E. Justice. “There are certain writers that find us in youth, or in a moment of youth when we’re bent-backed and hoary, who cause a strange and irreversible reaction… William Saroyan is such a writer,” William E. Justice writes in Essential Saroyan, a collection of stories by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Fresno author and playwright. Read an excerpt from the introduction here.

By J.D. Lasica. An exploration of a new age of prohibition. In this excerpt from chapter one, he shares the story of three Mississippi teens and their labor of love: a movie Steven Spielberg praised and you’ll probably never see.

By devorah major. When she served as San Francisco’s poet laureate in 2002, major asked people to send her poems about life in the city. She heard from children, seniors, the homeless, working folks and celebrated authors, too… and shares their stories in this anthology. Read an excerpt from the introduction here.

by Edward Humes. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Humes chronicles life inside California’s top public high school, where the test scores are stratospheric, sleep is optional, and the kids chug espresso just to keep up.

By Kathi Kamen Goldmark. Backup singer Sarah Jean Pixlie got her own song on the radio and that got her nominated for a coveted Patsy award. And that got her fired by country star Cindy-Lu Bender. What to do? Head home to California and the warm, weird embrace that awaited her at the Dewdrop Inn. [...]

By Hector Tobar. In his Ode to Caltrans, Hector Tobar writes about Southern Californian’s specal relationship to the freeways in this essay from the critically acclaimed anthology.

By Pico Iyer. Lauded travel writer Pico Iyer introduces My California: Journeys by Great Writers. This critically acclaimed anthology of travel and adventure stories donated by 27 of California’s most talented writers benefits the beleaguered California Arts Council.

By Eric Stone. Eric Stone relates the “real-life noir” story of 1940’s pitcher Blackie Schwamb. “It involved gangsters and nightclubs and baseball from Mexico to Canada and mostly behind prison walls. There were girls and guns and gambling and booze and ballgames …” Read more from the introduction here.

By D. J. Waldie. Holy Land was published by W. W. Norton in 1996 and has been in print — and collecting accolades — ever since. It’s found new readers over the years in book clubs and college classrooms and among writers as well as urban planners. The poet Michael Palmer called it “a new American classic.” Norton released a new, expanded paperback edition of Holy Land in April 2005. The new edition includes an introduction and extended afterword that bring the book’s themes into the contemporary debate over the value and durability of suburban places. Read an excerpt from the new introduction here.

By Roman Loranc and Lillian Vallee. Photographer Roman Loranc brings the ancient, still soul of the Great Central Valley into exquisite focus. In his book he lets us into its secret places where California’s heart is reflected back to us: subtle and startling; eternal and ephemeral.

By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. California Uncovered is a central component of the California Stories Uncovered campaign — a statewide program sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities designed to inspire people to tell and listen to stories that get at the reality beneath the headlines, statistics, and stereotypes about the state and its people. It includes works by John Steinbeck, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Joan Didion, as well as compelling new voices that reveal California in all its complexity. Read from the introduction by Chitra Banerjee here.

By Ernest Marquez.One of the world’s most popular and beloved beaches is documented in never-before-published photographs dating back to 1877. Author Ernest Marquez is a descendant of the family that held the original Mexican land grants to what is now Santa Monica. Read from the introduction here.