Welcome to our list of 2004 books by California authors. You can buy books right from this page. Just click through our title links to buy at Powells.com.
Books are listed by month of publication. Last update: 05-24-05.
2004 releases: january . february . march . april . may . june . july .august . september . october - december
2007 releases . 2006 releases. 2005 releases . 2003 releases . 2002 releases
Click here for a list of our blog entries on 2008 releases.
Fiction
After Havana. By Charles Fleming. Los Angeles author sets his novel in 1958 Havana: a dangerous world of musicians, security forces, and communist revolutionaries. St. Martin’s Minotaur.
Among Wolves. By Scott O’Connor. Short novel about a young boy who believes that his family has been replaced by imposters. Swannigan & Wright.
The Beach Club. By Rich Paloma. The maverick swing shift of the Eden Vally Police Department — known as The Beach Club — hunts down a sexual predator. Relying on his years of experience as a police patrol officer and detective, Paloma offers readers a look at the dark humor and aggravations of being a uniformed police officer. Helm Publishing.
The Second Chair. By John Lescroart. To the outside world, it looks like Dismas Hardy is finally on top. A managing partner at his thriving, newly reorganized San Francisco law firm, he’s a rainmaker and fix-it guy for clients leery of taking their chances in a courtroom. But beneath the surface bravado and the lucrative deal-making, Hardy has lost his faith in the law. Dutton Books.
Vertical Coffin: A Shane Scully Novel. By Stephen J. Cannell. The Edgar and Emmy Award-winning writer turns out a thriller rife with inter-bureau conspiracy and betrayal. St. Martin’s Press.
Nonfiction
Berkeley High School Slang Dictionary. Students in Berkeley High’s Communication Arts and Sciences program compiled this collection. Words come from African American, Chicano, Jewish, and sports cultures, and include era-specific slang from the beatniks, ’60s African American Church, movie culture, hip hop, and drug subculture. North Atlantic Books.
Choose What Works: The Proven Secrets to Professional Greatness. By Howard Goldman. A step-by-step plan for professionals in any field to become leaders. Wynnefield Business Press.
Hollywood Animal: A Memoir. By Joe Eszterhas. Screenwriter recounts the fights, the deals, the extortions, the backstabbing, and the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll world that is Hollywood. Knopf.
Homicide Special: On the Streets with the LAPD’s Elite Detective Unit. By Miles Corwin. A behind-the-scenes glimpse of the LAPD, including the Robert Blake investigation. Henry Holt & Company.
Ice Cream Treats: Easy Ways to Transform Your Favorite Ice Cream into Spectacular Desserts. By Charity Ferreira. Photographs by Leigh Beisch. Using store-bought ice cream, this book offers 65 sweet sensations for dinner parties, birthday celebrations, and treats any day of the week. Chronicle Books.
L.A. City Limits. By John Sides. In 1964 an Urban League survey ranked Los Angleles as the most desirable city for African Americans to live in. In 1965 the city burst into flames during one of the worst race riots in the nation’s history. How the city came to such a pass is the story told in this history of modern black Los Angleles. University of Claifornia Press.
Malibu Diary: Notes from an Urban Refugee . By Penelope Grenoble O’Malley. An environmental history, personal memoir, and a lengthy meditation on the complicated relationships between humans and the landscapes they destroy by loving them too much. University of Nevada Press.
Natalie Wood: A Life. By Gavin Lambert. LA biographer explores Wood’s marriages, her divorces, her love affairs, her suicide attempt at twenty-six, the birth of her children, her friendships, her struggles as an actress and her tragic death by drowning (she was always terrified of water) at forty-three. Knopf.
The Path of Direct Awakening: Passages for Meditation. By Stephen H. Ruppenthal. A collection of short, lyric passages drawn from the Buddhist literature of India and China, and the Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist traditions of China. They include 70 poems and 10 prose pieces — writings by such figures as Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Han Shan, Huang Po, and Wang Wei. Ruppenthal has a Ph.d in Chinese and Sanskrit literature from the University of California at Berkeley and leads workshops in the art of passage meditation. Berkeley Hills Books.
Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘n’ Roll and Murder. By Mike Sager. From fallen porn star John Holmes to jailed pop star Rick James, to the assassination of Irish reporter Veronica Guerin, this collection brings pop culture’s underbelly into dark focus. Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream. By Glenna Matthews. What accounts for the growing income inequalities in Silicon Valley, despite huge technological and economic strides? Why have the once-powerful labor unions declined in their influence? How are increasing waves of immigration and ethnic diversity changing the workplace in the Valley? Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream examines these questions from the perspective of women in Silicon Valley. Stanford University Press.
Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer. By Lynne Cox. The long–distance swimmer from Orange County, who has swam the English Channel, the Bering Strait and the Cape of Good Hope, tells how she braved the frigid waters of Antarctica.
Voice of Reason: Why the Left and Right Are Wrong . By Ronn Owen. Bay Area talk show host blames both the Left and the Right for Americas current problems. John Wiley & Sons.
Weekend Driver San Diego. By Jack Brandais. A guide to the Union-Tribune columnists’ twenty favorite day drives in San Diego County, Baja and Orange County. Sunbelt publications.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill: A Love Story . . .with Wings . By Mark Bittner. The story of how the author found his life’s work–and true love–as caretaker to a flock of wild parrots roosting in San Francisco. Random House.
Short stories and poetry
Every Night is Ladies’ Night: Stories. By Michael Jaime-Becerra. A collection of ten interconnected stories set in El Monte’a Latino community. Rayo.
Children’s
The Boy on Fairfield Street. By Kathleen Krull. This is a picture book biography of Ted Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss. The animals in the zoo that his father ran and his fondness for drawing them, the injustices he suffered as the child of German immigrants, and his inherent sense of humor all fed into the imagination of this boy. He was a square peg in a round hole until he found that he could make a living doing exactly what he pleased — doodling and writing funny things about the world as he saw it (ages 6-12). Random House Books for Young Readers.
Fiction
The Confessions of Max Tivoli. By Andrew Sean Greer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This novel unfolds the story of a man named Max, born in San Francisco in 1871, who ages in reverse. In each phase, Max harbors an impossible love for Alice, his downstairs neighbor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The Dim Sum of All Things . By Kim Wong Keltner. In this novel about growing up Chinese in San Francisco, twentysomething Lindsey Owyang tries to deny her affinity for Peking duck and Hello Kitty, lusts after “white devils,” all while living with her irreverent grandmother who sets Lindsey up on blind dates with grandsons of her mahjong partners. Avon.
The Forest Lover. By Susan Vreeland. A historical novel that tells the story of painter Emily Carr, who shook up the early twentieth-century art scene with uncompromising brushstrokes that captured the fading wilderness of an increasingly industrialized British Columbia as well as the indigenous villages, the tribal peoples and their dying customs and art forms. She faced hypocrisy and injustice, and was always true to herself, and to her art. Viking Books.
Happy Baby. By Stephen Elliott. Novel explores how pain can define desire, how the future becomes the past, and how grace struggles with self-destruction. The story, told in reverse, begins with thirty-six-year-old Theo and his search for sexual and emotional freedom, and slowly unravels back to a childhood of abuse in the juvenile detention centers of Chicago. MacAdam/Cage Publishing
On a Night Like This. By Ellen Sussman. A struggling, single mother in San Francisco is faced with the decision of her lifetime: what to do when the right man comes along … but at the wrong time. Warner Books.
Poetry/Short Stories
Headless . By Benjamin Weissman. L.A. writer offers a collection of short stories ranging from Hitler’s secret life as a skier to the philosophical musings of identical twin porn stars to the travails of the world’s most sitcom-defying family. Akashic Books.
Nonfiction
Barbie Loves L.A. By Greg LaVoi. Hollywood costume designer LaVoi photographs California’s most famous plastic girl at famous landmarks, from the Hollywood Sign to City Hall to Pink’s Hot Dogs. Barbie is decked out in vintage–wear, of course. Angel City Press.
Building San Francisco’s Parks, 1850-1930. By Terence Young. A history of the origins of San Francisco’s Golden Gate and other parks. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lines on the Land: Writers, Art, and the National Parks. By Scott Herring. The author contends that early writers and artists of the national parks were canon makers, recognizing the national parks as naturally occurring works of art and conferring upon them a cultural prestige. This praise would gradually give way, however, to a distinctly American anger — what Herring calls “outraged idealism.” Later generations were faced with a changing culture that had imperfectly absorbed, and even misrepresented, the national-park aesthetic. The book has a major focus on Yosemite National Park and also discusses writers such as John Muir, Joseph LeConte, Frederick Law Olmsted, Clarence King, and Gary Snyder, and photographers Ansel Adams, Ted Orland, Roger Minick, and David Robertson. University Press of Virginia.
Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon — The Case Against Celebrity. By Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner. Charting celebrities from rehab to detox, from jails, cults, and institutions to near-death experiences, this is anl odyssey into the darkest realms of the entertainment industry. John Wiley & Sons.
Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers . By Lois P Frankel. Are you an inappropriate smiler? Do you couch statements as questions? Do you tilt your head when you speak? Are you hesitant to spend the company’s money? Frankel says these habits and other habits may be holding you back from being perceived as professional, competent, and successful. Warner Business Books
Out of Gas: All You Need to Know about the End of the Age of Oil. By David Goodstein. The author, a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, reaches this conclusion: “Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels.” W. W. Norton & Company.
Ramblin’ Man. By Ed Cray. USC journalism professor writes a biography of American songwriter and singer Woody Guthrie, making use of the newly opened Woody Guthrie Archives in NYC. W.W. Norton.
Recall!: California’s Political Earthquake. By Larry Gerston and Terry Christensen. The authors look at the events leading up to the ouster of Gray Davis by bodybuilder-turned actor-turned politician Arnold Schwarzenegger; describe the cast of characters involved in the special election; and demonstrate how California’s one-of-a-kind mix of political, economic, and social circumstances made it all possible. M E Sharpe.
The Sea Ranch. By Donlyn Lyndon. A hundred miles north of San Francisco on California Coast Highway 1, the Sonoma County coast meets the Pacific Ocean at the Sea Ranch. When the area, a sheep ranch well into the last century, was rediscovered for its beauty in the 1960s, it came to be envisioned as a home community that harmonized with the environment. The Sea Ranch is a lavishly illustrated monograph on the Sea Ranch community, including over 300 photographs, maps, plans, detailed descriptions of the houses, and essays by Donald Canty and Lawrence Halprin. Princeton Architectural Press.
Children’s
Candy Lane Craze. By David E. Spencer. Children’s fantasy takes readers to a city that is a sweet surprise. Booksurge, LLC.
Fiction
1906: A novel. By James Dalessandro. Set during the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, this is a saga of political corruption, vendettas, romance, rescue and murder. Told by a feisty young reporter, Annalisa Passarelli, the novel paints a picture of the Victorian-era City, from the mansions of Nob Hill to the underbelly of the Barbary Coast to the arrival of tenor Enrico Caruso and the Metropolitan Opera. Central to the story is the ongoing battle—fought even as the city burns—that pits incompetent and unscrupulous politicians against a coalition of honest police officers, newspaper editors, citizens, and a lone federal prosecutor. Chronicle Books.
American Desert. By Percival Everett. Part parable, part satire, part fantasy novel, this is the story of Theodore Street, a college professor on the brink of committing suicide. When the decision is taken out of his hands – he is hit by a car and his head is severed from his body — Street must come to terms with himself. The author, Percival Everett, is a professor of English at USC and has written fourteen previous novels. Hyperion.
It’s All True: A Novel of Hollywood. By David Freeman. The story of a down-and-out screenwriter making his big play to get back on top. Simon & Schuster.
Wingbeat. By Marilyn Meredith. A hidden marijuana farm and the murder of a long-lost daughter keep Deputy Tempe Crabtree busy, while her husband has trouble of his own. Mystery is set in the mountains of the Southern Sierra. Golden Eagle Press.
Short stories/Poetry
Jubilee King. By Jesse Shepard. A collection of stories set in the rugged Western landscapes that most of his characters call home. Shepard lives in Northern California. Bloomsbury.
Nonfiction
Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America’s Golden State. By Joe Domanick. This is an investigative look, through the stories of people on both sides of the law, at the development and impact of the three strikes legislation in California. University of California Press.
Globalizing LA. By Steven P. Erie. The author looks at the improbable rise of Los Angeles, explaining how a region with no natural harbor and a metropolis situated a distant 20 miles from the coast managed to become the world’s ninth largest economy and a leading trade and transportation center. Stanford University Press.
Important Bird Areas of California. By Daniel S. Cooper. This new book is the culmination of a three-year effort to locate and describe key areas around the state most important to birds. Audubon California.
My 30 Years in Dodger Blue. By Fred Claire. With Steve Springer. The former general manager talks about his three decades in the Los Angeles Dodgers front office. Sports Publishing.
The Three Martini Playdate: A Practical Guide to Happy Parenting. By Christie Mellor. L.A. author offers advice to right the balance between parent and child. In dozens of short chapters, she skewers today’s parental absurdities and reminds us how to make child-rearing a kick. Chronicle Books.
Wildly Successful Plants Northern California. By Pam Pierce. The author pinpoints 50 often overlooked main plant species that effortlessly add dazzle to gardens throughout Northern California. Sasquatch Books.
Working Fire: The Making of an Accidental Fireman. By Zac Unger. Memoir of a rookie Oakland firefighter, an Ivy League grad who found his calling by answering an ad at a bus stop. Penguin Books.
Children’s
Al Capone Does My Shirts. By Gennifer Choldenko. San Francisco author tells the story of a 12-year-old boy named Moose who lives on Alcatraz, where his father is employed and the inmates work in the laundry. Moose, whose older sister is autistic, becomes part of a scheme to charge his mainland classmates a nickel apiece to get their shirts laundered by the likes of Al Capone. The story is set in 1935 (ages 10 and up). Putnam.
Escaping Tornado Season. By Julie Williams. Allie’s swept up in a tornado of loss as she turns 14, but writing helps her survive the deaths of her father and brother, life with her emotionally unstable mother, and the challenges of moving to an ethnically divided community where friendship with an Ojibwe boy and girl is forbidden. A young adult novel in poems. (ages 13-17) HarperTempest.
The Happiest Toddler on the Block: The New Way to Stop the Daily Battle of Wills and Raise a Secure Andwell-Behaved One- To Four-Year-Old. By Harvey Karp. Southern California pediatrician describes a number of parenting techniques.
Hummingbird Nest: A Journal of Poems. By Kristine O’Connell George. The story of a hummingbird who built her nest and raised a family in a small tree on the author’s back patio in Claremont. Harcourt.
If Roast Beef Could Fly: Book and CD. By Jay Leno. Tonight Show host draws on a true story from his childhood: Little Jay’s mom is maniacally thrifty, his dad is extravagant, and little Jay always seems to be caught in the middle. So when Jay’s dad decides that his next big “project” is going to be an barbecue patio, the only way it’s going to happen is if Jay, their neighbors, and Bruce, the laziest dog in America, help him out. There’s a party to launch the new patio — and that’s where the roast beef comes in. Simon & Schuster.
Fiction
Earthquake Weather. By Terrill Lee Lankford. The story begins on the morning of January 17, 1994, when aspiring Hollywood movie producer Mark Hayes is jolted by the Northridge earthquake. His world — toiling in a dead-end job in a hot new production company — is further roiled when he is tagged as prime suspect in the murder of his loathsome boss. Lanford knows this treacherous world well: he’s been a Hollywood writer, producer and director for more than twenty years. Ballantine.
O’Brien’s Desk. By Ona Russell. Historical mystery based on real events in the 1920s. Russell’s grandfather-in-law was a prominent judge in Toledo during that time. When she came upon his secret collection of scrapbooks and newspaper clippings, Russell unraveled the true story of political intrigue and personal secrets that would become her first novel. Sunstone Press.
One Small Thing. By Jessica Barksdale Inclan. Avery Tacconi imagines she can control everything, but she is unprepared for her husband’s surprise announcement: he has a ten-year-old son. New American Library.
Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart. By Alice Walker. The story of a woman’s spiritual adventure that becomes a passage through time, a quest for self, and a collision with love. Kate has always been a wanderer. A well-published author, married many times, she has lived a life rich with explorations of the natural world and the human soul. Now, at fifty-seven, she leaves her lover to embark on a new excursion, one that begins on the Colorado River, proceeds through the past, and flows inexorably into the future. Random House.
The Shadow of the Wind. By Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The story of a boy’s quest through the secrets and shadows of postwar Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book has proved as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget. The author is a native of Barcelona who now lives in Los Angeles. His book spent more than a year on Spanish best-seller lists. Now, it is being published in more than 20 countries and has been translated into English by Lucia Graves. Penguin Books.
Sleep. By Kat Meads. Santa Cruz writer unfolds a what if? novel of the future, featuring a sleeper cult, retro rebels, nods, the overworked and the under-rested. Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama.
Therapy. By Jonathan Kellerman. Psychologist Alex Delaware’s investigation into a sadistic double slaying leads to a corrupt multimillion-dollar scheme made up of equal parts madness and menace. Ballantine.
Unwilling Accomplice: A Munch Mancini Crime Novel. By Barbara Seranella. Munch Mancini and little daughter Asia are doing just fine. Munch rejoices in her job as an auto mechanic at the Brentwood Texaco. She and Asia have a house and a dog, and Munch has been off drugs for years. She plans to stay that way. It’s tough, though, when people from her old life resurface. Scribner.
Poetry/short stories
Americus, Book I. By Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A book-length poem, a “born-in-the USA narrative” in which the world-famous San Francisco poet “stalks our literary and political landscapes, past and present, to articulate the unique voice of America and create an autobiography of our collective American consciousness.” New Directions.
The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems. Edited by Mark Eisner. Preface by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Pablo Neruda was born in Chile in 1904. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. A team of poets and Neruda scholars in both Chile and the U.S. selected his collection. City Lights Publishers.
The Laws of Evening: Stories. By Mary Yukari Waters. This debut collection of fictional stories explores a Japanese society caught between the long shadow of World War II and the rapid advance of Westernization. Scribner.
More Stories We Tell: The Best Contemporary Short Stories by North American Women:. Edited by Wendy Martin. Twenty-eight stories explore the diverse terrain of women’s experiences as mothers, daughters, wives, lovers, artists, and friends. Contributors include Ellen Gilchrist, Sandra Cisneros, Grace Paley, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, Jhumpa Lahiri, ZZ Packer, and Marisa Silver. Martin is chair of the Department of English at Claremont Graduate University and lives in Berkeley. Pantheon Books.
Naked: Writers Uncover the Way We Live on Earth . Edited by Susan Zakin. Through works of fiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir, this energetic anthology addresses issues that concern us today: genetic research, globalization, technology, urban alienation, suburban sprawl, immigration, animal rights, colonialism, wilderness preservation, and much more. Contributors include Deanne Stillman and Joe Donnelly. Four Walls Eight Windows.
Pink Steam. By Dodie Bellamy. Firecracker Award-winner Dodie Bellamy tackles life, death, sex, humor, philosophy, history, literature, and mass culture in this collection of short fiction, memoirs and essays. Suspect Thoughts Press.
47 Down: The 1922 Argonaut Gold Mine Disaster. By O. Henry Mace. The story of America’s worst gold mine disaster, in Jackson, CA. John Wiley & Sons.
American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and the Making of the Beat Generation. By Jonah Raskin. A work of cultural and historical criticism that shows how Allen Ginsberg transformed the American literary tradition in poetry with his own individual talent and created Howl, a work of genius that defined and shaped a generation and helped to break the Cold War culture of conformity.
Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913. by Richard Steven Street. Labor historian Street follows the history of farmworkers beginning with the early Spanish missions. Stanford University Press.
Beyond the Outer Shores. By Eric Enno Tamm. Biography of Ed Ricketts, the marine biologist and friend of John Steinbeck who was immortalized as “Doc” in Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. The author explores Ricketts’ important work in coastal ecology. Four Walls Eight Windows Press.
Chick: His Unpublished Memoirs and the Memories of Those Who Knew Him. By Chick Hearn and Steve Springer. Foreword by Jerry West. Afterword by Bill Walton. The story of Chick Hearn, broadcaster for the Los Angeles Lakers for four decades and 3,338 consecutive games. Accompanying CD narrated by Al Michaels. Triumph Books.
Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN. By Scott Collins. L.A. Times writer looks at how upstart Fox News challenged CNN and MSNBC for cable news supremacy. Portfolio.
Dangerous Intimacy: The Untold Story of Mark Twain’s Final Years. By Karen Lystra. New biography relates the story of how, shortly after his wife’s death in 1904, Twain basked in the attentions of his flirtatious — and calculating — secretary. University of California Press.
Deeper Than Gold: A Guide to Indian Life in the Sierra Region. By Brian Bibby. Photographs by Dugan Agular. A portrait of the native cultures — languages, ceremonies and stories — that originated in theriver canyons, meadows and mountains of California’s Sierra Nevada. Heyday Books.
Fanatics & Fools. By Arianna Huffington. Author delivers a scalding attack on the status quo of the American political system. Miramax Books.
Finding Fault in California: An Earthquake Tourist’s Guide. By Susan Elizabeth Hough. This conversational book leads the earthquake curious to the state’s most accessible, active, and earth-shaping faults and tells the stories behind the major temblors that have shaken the region. Amateur fault finders can view such features as a seismically dissected hill in the Mojave Desert, a neighborhood that is slowly being wrenched in two by the creeping Calaveras fault, and the now-landscaped surface rupture from the 1971 San Fernando quake in a McDonald’s parking lot. Photos, maps, diagrams (most with precise GPS coordinates). Mountain Press Publishing Company.
Genesis, Structure, and Meaning in Gary Snyder’s “Mountains and Rivers Without End”. By Anthony Hunt. A detailed analysis of Snyder’s 1996 work. Part of the Western Literature Series. University of Nevada Press.
The Girl & the Fig Cookbook: More than 100 recipies from the Acclaimed California Wine Country Restaurant. By Sondra Bernstein. The renowned restaurateur behind the Bay Area’s popular “the girl & the fig” restaurants serves up a collection of sophisticated yet simple recipes featuring fresh, seasonal ingredients and a French country flair. Simon & Schuster.
The Golden Game: The Story of California Baseball. By Kevin Nelson. Foreward by Hank Greenwald. California didn’t get its first major league baseball team until 1958, when the Dodgers and Giants moved here from the East Coast. But the state’s history in the game began a century before, when New Yorkers drawn west by the gold rush brought baseball to the Bay Area. Nelson presents more than 120 years of that history in words and pictures. A California Historical Society Press Book. Heyday Books.
Good Grief. By Lolly Winston. Bay Area author tells the story of an offbeat 36-year-old widow who has to reinvent herself after the death of her husband. Warner.
Last Lullaby. By Denise Hamilton. The latest adventures of reporter Eve Diamond, who has spent the day at LAX, shadowing a U.S. Customs supervisor, when shots ring out and a new mystery unfolds. Scribner.
Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies. By David L. Robb. Directors of war and action movies receive access to billions of dollars worth of military equipment and personnel, but it comes with a hidden cost. A veteran Hollywood journalist says the final product is often not just what the director intends but also what the powers-that-be in the military want to project about America’s armed forces. Prometheus Books.
The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity. By Joseph Wilson. Former U.S. ambassador recounts more than two decades in the U.S. Foreign Service under presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton — from Angola to Iraq to Bosnia to Niger. Wilson also offers his account of the second Bush administration’s misrepresentation of intelligence before the 2003 war in Iraq. Carroll & Graf Publishers.
Poplorica: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore That Shaped Modern America. By Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger. Pop culture meets pop reference in this irreverent tour of surprising twentieth-century events and inventions that forever changed the way we live. Journalists Smith and Kiger forage through technology, business, entertainment, sports and sociology, revealing the real stories and significance of events as unheralded as Alfred Kinsey’s disastrous honeymoon, Betty Ford’s intervention, and the birth of celebrity voyeurism, as well as the invention of Big Bertha golf clubs, pantyhose, super-absorbent disposable diapers, and permanent press clothes, HarperCollins.
Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress. By Carl Pope and Paul Rauber. Sierra club executive director Carl Pope and coauthor Paul Rauber, assert that George W. Bush has fundamentally altered the basic equation governing environmental protection in America that the Bush Administration seeks to overturn the consensus on natural-resource policy developed from the time of Theodore Roosevelt through the end of the Clinton administration. Sierra Club books.
The Success of Open Source. By Steven Weber. Much of the innovative programming that powers the Internet, creates operating systems, and produces software is the result of “open source” code, that is, code that is freely distributed — as opposed to being kept secret — by those who write it. Leaving source code open has generated some of the most sophisticated developments in computer technology, which pose a significant challenge to Microsoft in the marketplace. UC Berkely professor Weber discusses how open source’s success in a highly competitive industry has subverted many assumptions about how businesses are run, and how intellectual products are created and protected. Harvard University Press.
Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign . By Pico Iyer. Travel writer Pico Iyer embarks on an array of exotic explorations, from L.A. and Yemen to Haiti and Ethiopia, from a Bolivian prison to a hidden monastery in Tibet. He goes to Cambodia, where the main tourist attraction is a collection of skulls from the Khmer Rouge killing fields, and travels through southern Arabia in the weeks before September 11, 2001. He practices meditation with Leonard Cohen and discusses geopolitics with the Dalai Lama, travels to Easter Island and through the imaginative terrains of W. G. Sebald and Kazuo Ishiguro. Knopf.
Wanderlust. By Troy M. Litten. San Francisco-based writer and photographer captures the funny, mundane, and unexpectedly beautiful aspects of traveling the world with a sense of discovery and wonder. Here are Japanese transit lockers decorated with cherry blossoms, exuberant London postcard racks, hand-painted Indian signs, Bangkok night market displays, cheap hotel decor in Buenos Aires, feather duster salesmen in Rio, and mannequin faces in Istanbul. Chronicle books.
Word Craft: The Art of Turning Little Words Into Big Business. By Alex Frankel. Bay Area business journalist looks at the power of words in the global marketplace. The most powerful are brand names–monikers created by a largely unheralded collection of marketers known as professional namers. Frankel tells the story of how five major brands got their names: BlackBerry, Accenture, Viagra, the Porsche Cayenne, and IBM’s “e-business.” Crown.
A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck. By Jane Smiley. Smiley, who lives in Northern California and owns horses, draws upon her firsthand knowledge, as well as the wisdom of trainers, vets, jockeys, and a horse whisperer, to examine the horse on all levels — practical, theoretical, and emotional. Knopf.
Children’s
The Golden Hour. By Maiya Williams. Thirteen-year-old Rowan Popplewell and his younger sister Nina are sent to spend the summer with their two eccentric great-aunts in Owatannauk, Maine, a town with 104 residents and as many secrets. Amulet Books.
Fiction
Homeland. By Cris Mazza. A woman takes her stroke-victim father out of a geriatric hospital to go look for the site of a family tragedy that happened three decades earlier. By the end of their journey, they not only experience but are influential factors in a brushfire inferno and a Columbine-like attack on migrant workers - both part of an apocalypse of hate, but which stand in sharp contrast to the woman’s visceral yet strangely pastoral memories of love and death in a secluded, devoted family. Red Hen Press.
The Narrows. By Michael Connelly. Investigating what appears to have been the natural death of the husband of an old friend, LAPD detective Harry Bosch decides to dig deeper, given the man’s ties to the hunt for the infamous serial killer, The Poet. Little Brown.
Other People’s Weddings. By Noah Hawley. Painful memories of the past emerge for a wedding photographer who gets involved with a serial wedding crasher, and she must confront them if she wants her new love to endure. St. Martin’s Press.
Sweet Revenge. By Kate Clemens/Mary Mackey. When her finace dumps her at the altar and runs off with her best friend, L.A. matchmaker Nora Wynn starts a revenge consulting service called “Payback Time.” Business is booming until someone starts taking revenge on her. Author Mary Mackey, who sometimes writes under the pen name “Kate Clemens,” teaches at California State University in Sacramento. Kensington.
Terminal Island: A Jack Liffey Mystery. By John Shannon. While detective Jack Liffey is convalescing from a collapsed lung from his last case, he is called to his hometown of San Pedro, shipyard to Los Angeles, where an inexplicable string of mysterious accidents have befallen local residents; a child turns up missing, a fishing boat sinks, a life’s work is destroyed–and Japanese playing cards with cryptic notes are left at the scenes. Carroll & Graf.
Poetry/Short stories
Dancing In Odessa. By Ilya Kaminsky. A collection of poems written by a Russian immigrant who came to the United States only a few years ago without knowing a single word of English. Kaminsky now lives between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Tupelo Press.
Waiting to be Heard. By thirty-nine students of San Francisco’s Thurgood Marshall Academic High School. Foreward by Isabel Allende. This anthology includes essays, fiction, poetry, and experimental writing as students explore personal, local, and global issues. Isabel Allende Foundation/ 826 Valencia.
Nonfiction
Beat Thing. By David Meltzer. Part poetry and part expose, Beat Thing pays tribute to the wildness of the Beat Generation. La Alameda Press.
Birthday Cakes: Recipes and Memories from Celebrated Bakers. By Kathyrn Kleinman, with text by Carolyn Miller. With more than 55 color photographs, Birthday Cakes features celebratory cakes and birthday stories by renowned chefs, cookbook writers, and bakers — including Julia Child, Alice Waters, James Beard, Alice Medrich, and Jim Fobel. This cake-making book celebrate everything birthday: the making and presentation of the cake, the warm glow of the candles, the whispering of a wish, and the heartwarming ritual of cutting and sharing the cake. Chronicle Books.
Birth of the Chess Queen: A History. By Marilyn Yalom. Everyone knows that the queen is the most powerful piece in chess, but few people know that the game existed for five hundred years without her. In India, Persia, and the Arab lands, where the game was first played, a general, or vizier (chief counselor to the king), occupied the square where the queen now stands. Not until the year 1000, two hundred years after Arab conquerors brought chess to southern Europe, did a chess queen appear on the board. How and why did this transformation take place? Yalom examines the five-hundred-year period between the chess queen’s timid emergence and her elevation into the game’s mightiest piece. Harper Collins.
Fig Heaven: 70 Recipes for the World’s Most Luscious Fruit. By Marie Simmons. From Mission and Kadota figs to Adriatic and Calimyrna varieties, Southern California cookbook author Marie Simmons leaves no fig or fig leaf unturned. Morrow Cookbooks.
Great Books for High School Kids: A Guide to Wonderful, Engrossing, Life-Changing Reading. Edited by Rick Ayers and Amy Crawford. These two Berkeley High teachers were searching for a guide to the vast world of great books for teenagers—one that didn’t talk down or moralize. When they couldn’t find one, they decided to create it themselves. Beacon Press.
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. By Rebecca Solnit. When the worldwide movement against war in Iraq failed to persuade the Bush administration against military action, many activists felt that their actions had been futile, their voices ignored. Hope in the Dark arises out of this moment, arguing millions marching against war did not constitute a failure, but a step toward success. Solnit proposes a new vision of how change happens. She counts historic victories — from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Zapatista uprising to Seattle in 1999 to Cancun in September 2003 — tracing the rise of a sophisticated, supple, nonviolent new movement of movements that unite diverse and fragmentary issues of the eighties and nineties. Thunder’s Mouth, Nation Books.
Living from the Inside Out: How to Get to the Heart of Everything that Matters. By Jean-Marie Hamel. The author is a Santa Barbara professor and life coach. She offers a guide to cutting through misplaced priorities and finding a soulful path to a more purposeful and meaningful life. She looks at why acquiring symbols and images (the right car, clothing, house or mate) can never provide long-term satisfaction and the biggest energy drains: unfinished business, clutter and addictions. Crown publishing.
Marilyn Monroe Dyed Here: More Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks. By Chris Epting. This encyclopedic look at America’s most famous and infamous pop culture events includes historical information on more than 600 landmarks, as well as their exact locations. From the Huntington Beach author of James Dean Died Here. Santa Monica Press.
Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten. By Judy Artunian, Mike Oldham. Each of the nearly 400 entries includes a photo of the star and brief summation of the star’s career, the address of the star’s home, a photo of the home as it looks today, and fascinating facts about the site. Santa Monica Press.
Nesting: It’s a Chick Thing. By Ame Mahler Beanland and Emily Miles Terry. The authors of It’s a Chick Thing (with 110,000 copies in print) return to celebrate nesting and what it means to have a home filled with laughter, good friends, lovingly prepared foods and crafts, all with personal style. Seasoned with attitude and packed with stories, history, howtos, quips, advice, recipes, folklore, and crafts, Nesting is all about finding personal style and showing it off. Workman Publishing.
Simple Foods for the Pack: More than 180 All Natural Trail Tested Recipes. By Claudia Axcell, Vikki Kinmont Kath, Dianne Cooke. Third Edition - Completely Revised. A brand new edition of the original — and best — natural foods backpacking cookbook, featuring both new recipes and mouthwatering classics, plus the last word on cooking with today’s lightweight foods and modern backpacking equipment. Sierra Club Books.
Small World: A Microcosmic Journey. By Brad Herzog. From Moscow (Maine) to Mecca (California), Small World examines the big picture through the prism of tiny American towns struggling to live up to grandiose names. Herzog, who lives in Pacific Grove, CA, concludes the book with a chapter about the town of Mecca. Pocket Books.
Southern Californialand. By Charles Phoenix. The follow-up to Phoenix’s award-winning book Southern California in the ’50s, Southern Californialand showcases his vintage Kodachrome slide collection and shows why SoCal became The Place To Be. Angel City Press.
Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California . By JoAnn Levy. Arriving by ship in Santa Cruz in 1850 to take up residence at the home her husband had left her, Eliza Farnham watched as her household goods were tossed overboard to wash ashore and then be hauled uphill to the house, which she soon found to be half-finished and already well on the way to dilapidation. She proceeded to finish the house herself, introducing the townspeople to a new kind of woman. Her isolation was abated somewhat with the arrival of her friend Georgiana Kirby. As their friendship evolved, the two women explored California and their own capabilities. They were outspoken, often outrageous, and fervent on behalf of their causes—prison reform, women’s rights, Spiritualism, phrenology, abolitionism, and suffrage. Heyday Books.
Your Land and Mine: Evolution of a Conservationist. By Edgar Wayburn, with Allison Alsup. Memoir of one of the 20th century’s great conservation leaders, detailing his role in landmark conservation campaigns. Sierra Club Books.
Photography, art
Photographers of Genius at the Getty. By Weston J. Naef. The project showcases thirty–eight photographers whose work has been featured at the Getty Museum during the past two decades. They include Gustave Le Gray, Julia Margaret Cameron, Eugene Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, August Sander, Andre Kertesz, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Brassi, Henri Cartier–Bresson, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Weegee, and Diane Arbus. Getty Publications/Oxford University Press.
Children’s
Aesock’s Travels: Lights, Camera, Edison!/Los Viajes de Aesock: ¡Luz, Cámara, Edison! By Gretchen McMasters. Benjamin is devastated when his science project fails in front of his second grade class — but help is on the way from a mysterious creature with an affinity for attracting lost socks: Aesock. Benjamin, Olivia and Aesock travel back in time to meet Thomas Edison as a seven-year-old boy plagued by a hearing deficit and struggling with self-doubt in school. 7 to 10 years. Stargazer Publishing.
Kingdom of the Golden Dragon. By Isabel Allende. Not many months have passed since teenager Alexander Cold followed his grandmother into the heart of the Amazon to uncover its legendary Beast. This time, reporter Kate Cold escorts her grandson and his closest friend, Nadia, on a journey to another remote niche of the world. Entering a forbidden sovereignty tucked in the Himalayas, they try to locate its fabled Golden Dragon, a sacred statue and priceless oracle that can foretell the future of the kingdom. (ages 10 and up) HarperCollins.
What’s Happening to Grandpa? By Maria Shriver. Illustrated by Sandra Speidel. California’s First Lady tells a story about one family coping with Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. Little Brown & Co.
Fiction
Angels Crest. By Leslie Schwartz. A father leaves his son in the car for a few minutes on a winter’s day only to return and find the boy missing. Angels Crest is the story of grief, redemption and love in a small Sierra town when the boy is later found dead in the snowy woods. Doubleday.
Birds of a Feather. By Jacqueline Winspear. Maisie Dobbs is back and this time she has been hired to find a wealthy grocery magnate’s daughter who has fled from home. What seems a simple case at first becomes complicated when Maisie learns of the recent violent deaths of three of the heiress’ old friends. Is there a connection between her mysterious disappearance and the murders? As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers to all her questions lie in The Great War. Soho Press.
Coswell’s Guide to Tambralinga. By Scott Landers. In a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, Conrad and Lucy Shermer embark on a second honeymoon in fashionably exotic — and politically volatile — Southeast Asia where they each set out on dangerous and darkly comic expeditions. Farrar Straus Giroux.
The Dog Fighter. By Marc Bojanowski. Nothern California writer’s debut novel set in 1940s Mexico about a young man who becomes involved in a brutally violent spectator sport and must choose his loyalties in the fight for a city’s future. William Morrow & Company.
Fogtown. By Peter Plate. One foggy day in San Francisco brings together bloody ghosts, a dandyish thug, capricious cops, a suicidal punk rocker, a hyper-literate slumlord and a sweet old lady sent by God to hand out cash from a hijacked armored car. Plate lives in San Francisco and his new novel depicts hell as the underbelly of contemporary San Francisco. Consortium.
The Last King: A Maceo Redfield Novel. By Nichelle D. Tramble. This is the second mystery in the Maceo Redfield series, and he’s called back to Oakland by his Aunt Cissy. Back home, he learns that a childhood friend, an NBA star, has become tangled in the murder of a local girl. Maceo sets out to clear his friend’s name, staying one step ahead of the police as he traverses the dark corners of the Bay Area. Strivers Row/Ballantine Books.
I, Carlos. By Casey Dorman. A thriller in which a revolutionary computer chip, containing the personality of Carlos the Jackal, the world’s most notorious assassin, is planted into the protagonist’s brain, who is sent out to kill the President of the United States. Seven Locks Press.
I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason: A Cece Caruso Mystery. By Susan Kandel. Cece Caruso, a thirty-nine-year-old former beauty queen from New Jersey, turns sleuth and breaks into crime scenes, outfoxes lawyers, and rekindles a romance with a police detective. William Morrow.
Love Is Murder. By Linda Palmer. This first book in the mystery series introduces Morgan Tyler, the head writer for an award-winning New York City-based soap opera who finds herself investigating the mysterious death of the head of daytime programming. Berkley Publishing Group.
Misdemeanor Man. By Dylan Schaffer. Schaffer, a criminal defense lawyer from Oakland, introduces Gordon Seegerman, a reluctant public defender by day and the wildly enthusiastic lead singer in a Barry Manilow cover band by night. Seegerman lands in the legal tangle of his career when he ends up handling a misdemeanor flasher case and a key witness winds up dead. Bloomsbury.
My Life with Corpses. By Wylene Dunbar. A look at our limits on reality by an enigmatic narrator we know only as Oz, a Kansas farm girl raised by corpses. Harcourt.
Transmission. By Hari Kunzru. An Indian computer programmer’s luxurious fantasies about life in America are shaken when he gets fired from his Silicon Valley job. In an act of desperation, he releases a mischievous and destructive virus which unravels world order, as well as his sanity. Dutton Books.
Short Stories/Poetry
Lit Riffs. Edited by Matthew Miele. Introduction by Neil Strauss In this collection, a host of today’s authors — including Jonathan Lethem (Fortress of Solitude), Aimee Bender (Girl in the Flammable Skirt), Jennifer Belle (Going Down), Neal Pollack (Never Mind the Pollacks), and Tom Perrotta (Little Children) — launch a new art form: Short stories inspired by popular songs. MTV Books.
Nonfiction
Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain. By Steven M. Greenhut. While governments are authorized to invoke eminent domain - the power to take property by force — only when the property is to be employed for public uses, such as highways, schools and courthouse — local governments routinely seize private homes, small businesses or farms and hand them over to wealthy developers who have ‘better plans’ for the property. Greenhut provides a blueprint for reforms. Seven Locks Press.
Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.com Juggernaut. By James Marcus. Employee No. 55 details life inside Amazon:
- Average number of books sold each day in December: 60,000
- Average number of books grudgingly gift-wrapped by the author: 240
- Average number of hours spent at warehouse each day: 10
- Average number of hours spent skulking in coffee room: 1.5
- Number of times James Marcus was permitted to drive a warehouse forklift: O
New Press.
Burro Genius: A Memoir. By Victor Villasenior. The author of Thirteen Senses and Rain of Gold offers a passionate memoir exploring the journey of a misunderstood, humiliated and angry young man to the bestselling and lauded writer the public knows today. Rayo.
Camp. By Michael Eisner. Disney chairman’s memoir of his days at summer camp in Vermont. Warner Books.
Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-And-Tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture. By Carol Burke. A folklorist who taught as a civilian professor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, for seven years, UC Irvine Professor Burke analyzes the military as an occupational folk group, arguing that every detail of military culture — from the “high and tight” haircut to the chants sung in basic training —is laden with significance. Beacon Press.
The Cougar Almanac A Complete Natural History of the Mountain Lion. By Robert H. Busch. A thorough study of one of the most misunderstood of all the big cats. The Lyons Press
Dream Songs and Ceremony: Reflections on Traditional California Indian Dance. By Frank LaPena. In his collection of painting, LaPena draws upon thesymbols of California Indian dances photographed or videotaped. LaPena, a Nomtipom Wintu dancer, singer, andceremonial leader, complements his paintings and poetry withan introduction and commentary. Great Valley collection/Heyday Books.
Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World. By David Solnit. The author weaves together the experiences and insights of community organizers, direct action movements, and global justice struggles from North America, Europe, and Latin America. Thirty-three essays provide food for thought, examples of effective action, and practical tools. Contributors include Walden Bello, Van Jones, Naomi Klein, George Lakey, Elizabeth (Betita) Martínez, Midnight Notes Collective, Patrick Reinsborough, and Starhawk. Solnit lives in San Francisco. City Lights Books.
Hard Line: Life and Death on the U.S.-Mexico Border. By Ken Ellingwood. In 1994 the Clinton administration implemented Operation Gatekeeper, which succeeded in reducing the number of illegal border crossings into San Diego. But as a result, immigrants began to make crossings farther east, through some of the world’s most inhospitable desert areas, and every year more and more of them died in transit. Ken Ellingwood, who covered the U.S.-Mexico border for the Los Angeles Times from 1998 to 2002, brings this drama to life through the stories of Mexican immigrants, American ranchers, Native Americans, border patrol agents and human rights workers. Pantheon Books.
Life Is Short. Eat Biscuits!. By Amy Jordan Smith, illustrated by Ted Meyer. The lessons that dogs have to teach us about unconditional love and happiness are presented in this compilation of canine-inspired maxims. Santa Monica Press.
My California: Journeys by Great Writers. Edited by Donna Wares. Introduction by Pico Iyer. Fly-fish the pristine waters of the Owens River. Step up to the microphone in a California honky-tonk. Surf the biggest waves California has ever seen. Mingle with ducks in an urban oasis. Roller skate through LA’s Union Station. My California is a personal journal, a collection of narrative travel and adventure essays by 27 of California’s finest writers: Thomas Steinbeck, T. Jefferson Parker, Carolyn See, Michael Chabon, devorah major, Dana Gioia, Aimee Liu, T., Percival Everett, Mark Arax, Edward Humes, Patt Morrison, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, David Kipen, Rubén Martínez, Mary Mackey, Matt Warshaw, Firoozeh Dumas, D.J. Waldie, Héctor Tobar, Chryss Yost, Anh Do, Gerald Haslam, Daniel Weintraub, Veronique de Turenne, Derek M. Powazek and Deanne Stillman. A collaboration between Angel City Press and CaliforniaAuthors.com.
Nudie the Rodeo Tailor. By Mary Lynn Cabrall, Jamie Lee Nudie. The extraordinary story of Nudie and Bobbie Cohn and the legendary fashion legacy they created desiging for Dale Evans and Roy Rogers, Elton John, Gene Autry, John Wayne, John Lennon, Steve McQueen, Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton, and the rock groups America and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Nudie was the first person to incorporate rhinestones into cowboy dress and was the creator of Elvis Presley’s famous gold suit. Illustrated with photographs of suits, clothing, accessories, and of Nudie himself with the hundreds of clients and friends he made through the years. Gibbs Smith Publishers.
One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps. By Kevin Griffin. Griffin, a Buddhist meditation teacher in San Francisco and longtime Twelve Step practitioner, weaves his personal story of recovery with traditional Buddhist teachings. The book takes us on a journey through the Steps, examining critical Twelve Step ideas like Powerlessness, Higher Power, and Moral Inventory through the lens of Buddhism. Rodale Press.
Overcoming the Inheritance Taboo: How to Preserve Relationships and Transfer Possessions. By Steven J. Hendlin. Author, who practices clinical psychology in Irvine, looks at the psychology of financial inheritance,focusing on how to prevent silbling “blood wars.” Plume Books.
The Practical Patient: How to Choose Your Doctor and Ensure Your Best Health Care. By Dr. Tom Yi. A manual formulated by a family physician who is a firm believer in preventative medicine and patient education. The book is organized for quick reference, written in layman terms and is full of common sense advice. Seven Locks Press.
Spirit Medicine: A Guide to Healing in the Sacred Garden. By Hank Wesselman, Jill Kuykendall. The book reconsiders and reworks the time-tested techniques pioneered by the shamans of the indigenous peoples, providing nontribal Westerners with insights into healing and problem solving. Included is an experiential CD of shamanic drumming and rattling to be used with specific exercises and meditations. Hay House.
The Subject of Documentary (Visible Evidence # 16). By Michael Renov. Renov — a professor of critical sutdies at the USC School of Cinema-Television — focuses on how documentary filmmaking has become an important means for both examining and constructing selfhood. By looking at key figures in documentary filmmaking as well as noncanonical video art and avant-garde artists, Renov broadens the definition of what counts as documentary, and explores the intersection of the personal and political. University of Minnesota Press.
Street Wars: Gangs and the Future of Violence. By Tom Hayden. Drawing on ten years as an activist and public official working to understand and prevent gang violence in Los Angeles, Hayden offers an indictment of neo-conservative politics of law and order that he says dominate current policy and suffocate inner city youth. New Press.
The Undressed Art: Why We Draw. By Peter Steinhart. Combining the scientific, the historical, the anecdotal, and the personal, Steinhart (The Company of Wolves) reveals the allures and joys of a familiar art — and inspires readers to pick up a pencil and draw. Alfred A. Knopf.
Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past. By William Deverell. Chronicling the rise of Los Angeles through shifting ideas of race and ethnicity, Deverell looks at how the city grew and changed. He considers six different developments in the history of the city–including the cementing of the Los Angeles River, the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1924, and the evolution of America’s largest brickyard in the 1920s. University of California Press.
Walking the Flatlands:The Rural Landscape of the Lower Sacramento River. By Mike Madison. Foreward by Jan Goggans.The owner of a thirty-acre flower farm offers a critique of the land around him, the land he walks daily. A Great Valley Book/Heyday Books.
Other
Faux Mosaics: Make Twenty Stylish Paper Mosaics in Three Simple Steps. By Tera Leigh. Wrightwood author shows how to create mosaics without the mess of grout and broken glass and with scrapbook paper, wallpaper, stamped paper, etc. North Light Books.
Children’s
Worth. By A. LaFaye. Nathaniel is injured, so his father brings home an boy named John Worth from the Orphan Train to help on the farm. While Nathaniel feels jealous of Worth, who has taken his place and garnered his father’s attention, Worth mourns his family and his dream of an education (ages 8-12). Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Fiction
Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam. By Paul Clayton. In 1968, Carl Melcher is drafted and sent to Vietnam. His new company is infected with the same racial tensions plaguing the nation, but despite that, Carl makes friends on both sides of the color line. The war, like a tiger lurking in the bushes, picks off its victims one by one. The author lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press
The Dangerous Hour. By Marcia Muller. Muller’s heroine Sharon McCone returns to investigate a personal betrayal by one of her operatives that has put her private investigation business on the line. Mysterious Press.
Kill the Messenger. By Tami Hoag. A grueling day in L.A. is about to get even worse for bike messenger Jace Damon when a delivery for a bottom-feeding lawyer turns into a fight for his life. Narrowly escaping, he returns to the attorney’s office, only to find that the lawyer has been murdered — and he is the prime suspect. Now, in a frantic attempt to clear his name, Jace must rely on his urban survival skills to elude both the cops and the bad guys —while keeping himself and his younger brother safe from a killer. Bantam.
Goddess for Hire. By Sonia Singh. A hip, 30-year-old chick from Newport Beach discovers she’s the incarnation of the Hindu goddess Kali,and happens to be unemployed and still living with her parents. Saving the world, though,may prove to be a curry-scented breezecompared to dealing with her extended Indian family. In their eyes she isn’t just theblack sheep — she’s low-grade mutton. Avon Books.
Murder Plays House. By Ayelet Waldman. Public defender turned stay-at-home mom Juliet Applebaum has a new arrival on the way and is balancing clue-chasing, diaper-changing, and house-hunting. The fifth book in Waldman’s Mommy-Track mystery series. Prime Crime.
R Is for Ricochet: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery. By Sue Grafton. After a series of gritty mysteries, Grafton changes tone, giving readers a more lighthearted novel about a complex money-laundering scheme. This is the 18th book in Grafton’s popular series featuring detective Kinsey Millhone. Putnam.
A Seahorse Year. By Stacey D’Erasmo. In contemporary San Francisco, an extended family is transformed by the emerging breakdown of a troubled adolescent boy. The lives of those who love Christopher — his mother, Nan; her lover, Marina; his gay father, Hal; and Christopher’s loyal girlfriend, Tamara — are pushed to the edge by something new in him that mystifies them all. When he runs away, far into the woods of nothern California, their assumptions about themselves and one another are sorely tested. Houghton Mifflin Company.
Poetry/Short stories
The Cat’s Pajamas. By Ray Bradbury. A collection of previously unpublished stories written over the course of Bradbury’s career. William Morrow & Company.
The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms. by The Paris Review. Every day we must live through moments of waiting to get from one place to the next. This anthology, which includes pieces by California writers T.C. Boyle and Michael Chabon, offers reading material to fill those gray moments. The book is organized by the time that the reader has available at that moment. Picador.
Warrior-Poet of the Fifth Sun. By Luis A. Lopez. A book of Chicano Poetry. The author lives in San Jose. InnerCircle Publishing.
Nonfiction
Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild. By Susan McCarthy. San Francisco writer Susan McCarthy, co-author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller When Elephants Weep, offers readers an in-depth look into the amazing ways baby tigers and many other animals learn not only about themselves, but about their world and ours — and how to survive in both. Based on extensive scientific research, her findings provide new insights into the lives and development of Earth’s nonhuman inhabitants. HarperCollins.
Just a Geek. By Wil Wheaton. The child actor-turned-blogger-turned author tells his own story. O’Reilly & Associates
The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Predictions, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith. By David L. Ulin. Los Angeles author explores how an unlikely collection of scientists, psychics, and apocalyptics have made startlingly accurate earthquake predictions based on everything from magnetic fields to the behavior of whales. Ulin uses the world of earthquake prediction to explore the deep fault lines of belief and the human longing to hold control, no matter how misguided, over a mysterious and deadly phenomenon that is as much a part of California as speed, youth, and celebrity. Viking.
The War Between the State : Northern California vs. Southern California. By Jon Winokur. Battle lines have been drawn. It’s the North vs. the South once again. But this time it’s the Bay Area Brahmins against the Angelenos; the cultured vs. the philistines; old money vs. new; literary vs. blockbuster; irrelevant vs. fabulous. A cache of stinging barbs, witticisms, and commentary on life and meaning in Southern and Northern California. Sasquatch Books.
Wine Genius: Be a Guru of the Grape. By Janice Fuhrman. Tips on which wines to taste with what, how to serve them, when to serve them, how to open them, and much more. Mq Publications.
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. By Dan Gillmor. San Jose Mercury news columnist says that grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media’s monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation. Not content to accept the news as reported, these readers-turned-reporters are publishing in real time to a worldwide audience via the Internet. The impact of their work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists and the newsmakers they cover. Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon, and looks at the deep shift in how we make and consume the news. O’Reilly.
Children’s
101 Ways to Bug Your Teacher. By Lee Wardlaw. Boy-inventor Steve Wyatt and all his wacky friends return in this sequel to the award-winning novel 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents (ages 8-13). Dial/Penguin Group USA.
Tripping Over the Lunch Lady and Other School Stories. Edited by Nancy Mercado. Ten short stories about school life, written by children’s authors, including Santa Barbara children’s writer Lee Wardlaw (ages 8-13). Dial/Penguin Group USA.
Fiction
All These Girls. By Ellen Slezak. Set in the Midwest, this novel is a story of family and committment along with loss, rebirth and forgiveness. Slezak lives in Los Angels. Hyperion.
Slick. By Daniel Price. A talented young publicist with a flair for manipulating the news orchestrates a massive media hoax to save his rap star client from a manufactured sex scandal. Random House/Villard.
Through It Came Bright Colors . By Trebor Healey. This is a coming of age novel about two brothers, one dealing with a disfiguring cancer while the other struggles to come to terms with his sexuality. The story is set in San Francisco. Harrington Park Press.
The Tree Bride. By Bharati Mukherjee. The narrator, Tara Chatterjee (whom readers will remember from Desirable Daughters), picks up the story of an East Bengali ancestor. According to legend, at the age of five Tara Lata married a tree and eventually emerged as a nationalist freedom fighter. In piecing together her ancestor’s transformation from a docile Bengali Brahmin girl-child into an impassioned organizer of resistance against the British Raj, the narrator discovers and lays claim to unacknowledged elements in her “American” identity. Hyperion Books.
Short stories/Poetry