Welcome to our list of 2007 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: 07-17-07.
2007 releases: January . February . March . April . May . June . August . October
2006 releases . 2005 releases . 2004 releases . 2003 releases . 2002 releases
Click here for a list of our blog entries on 2008 releases.
Fiction . Poetry/Short Stories . Nonfiction . Cookbooks/Crafts/Gardens
Fiction . January 2007
Essential Mary Austin: A Selection of Mary Austin’s Best Writing . Edited with an introduction by Kevin Hearle. Mary Austin (1868-1934) helped shape America’s understanding of California and the West. Born in Illinois, she was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake, observed Los Angeles during its boom, and lived in Carmel when the community became a literary hub. Heyday Books.
Self Storage. By Gayle Brandeis. Self Storage is politically resonant story of a woman whose habit of buying and reselling storage unit contents sets her on a path of self-discovery inspired by Whitman’s Song of Myself. The novel is set in Riverside, much of it in Family Student Housing on the campus of UC Riverside. Ballantine.
Speak No Evil. By Allison Brennan. The author of The Kill begins a new back-to-back trilogy of romantic suspense with this tale of a female homicide detective who must solve a chain of gruesome sex crimes before a depraved killer chooses his next victim. Brennan lives in Northern California. Ballantine Books.
Poetry/Short Stories . January, 2007
Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present . What’s like to get bitten by a zombie? To live through a bioweapon attack? To have every aspect of your life governed by invisible ants? In his new collection of novellas, Doctorow explore the possibilities of information technology ? and its various uses ? run amok. He lives in Southern California and is a co-founder of BoingBoing.net. Thunder’s Mouth Press.
The Best American Magazine Writing 2006. er to fish in Field and Stream. Other writers include David Foster Wallace (The Atlantic Monthly), Joyce Carol Oates (The Virginia Quarterly Review), Priscilla Long (The American Scholar), and Jesse Katz (Los Angeles Magazine). Columbia University Press.
Bohemian Los Angeles. By Daniel Hurewitz. The story of a hidden corner of Los Angeles, where the personal first became the political, where the nation’s first enduring gay rights movement emerged. Portraying life over a period of more than forty years in the hilly enclave of Edendale, near downtown Los Angeles, Hurewitz considers the work of painters and printmakers, looks inside the Communist Party’s intimate cultural scene, and examines the social world of gay men.
Bonding While Learning: Activities to Grow Your Relationship While Preparing for Reading Success. By Gary Kosman & Grace Chiu. This book offers activities and materials to help young children learn to read and write while having fun; activities can be used at home and on the run — in the car, at the park, while out to eat, and at the doctor’s office. The authors live in Los Angeles County. America Learns.
Greenopia: The Urban Dweller’s Guide to Green Living. By Ferris Kawar. A directory of green businesses in Los Angeles, and handbook for living a green lifestyle in an urban environment. Kawar also teaches Sustainable Living Workshops in Santa Monica. Green Media Group.
The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong. By Barry Glassner. From the author of The Culture of Fear comes a rallying cry to abandon food fads and myths for calmer and more pleasurable eating. A professor of sociology at USC, Glassner lives in Los Angeles. Ecco Books.
Oasis of Stone: Visions of Baja California Sur. By Bruce Berger and Miguel Angel de la Cueva. Full-color photography by Miguel çngel de la Cueva, and text by Bruce Berger (Almost an Island, There Was a River), bring the southern half of Baja California to life. Beginning with its unique geology, and moving on to the coastal, desert, and mountain ecosystems of Mexico’s little-known peninsula, this coffee-table book highlights the geology that created this oasis of stone and the flora and fauna that are make their homes here. Sunbelt Publications.
Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties. By Robert Stone. From the New York City of Kline and De Kooning to the jazz era of New Orleans’s French Quarter to Ken Kesey’s psychedelic California, Prime Green explores the 1960s in all its weird, innocent, fascinating glory. An account framed by two wars, it begins with Robert Stone’s last year in the Navy, when he took part in an Antarctic expedition navigating the globe, and ends in Vietnam, where he was a correspondent in the days following the invasion of Laos. Ecco Books.
Cookbooks/Crafts/Gardens . January, 2007
A Celebration of Clematis. By Kaye Heafey & Ron Morgan. A pictorial book detailing the story behind Chalk Hill Clematis, a business in northern California devoted entirely to growing this flowering vine. Half Full Press
Fiction . Fiction . February 2007
Lost City Radio. By Daniel Alarcón. A nameless, timeless South American country slowly emerges from a war everyone would prefer to forget. For ten years, Norma has been the voice of consolation for a people broken by violence, while hiding her own personal loss: her husband disappeared at the end of the war. Norma’s radio program is the most popular in the country, and every week she reads the names of those who have gone missing. Loved ones are reunited, and the lost are found. But the life she has become accustomed to is forever changed when a young boy arrives from the jungle and provides a clue to the fate of her long-missing husband.Alarcón lives in Oakland. Harper Collins.
Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of my Unmarried Midlife. By Jane Ganahl. Beginning with the launch of her San Francisco Chronicle column ‘Single Minded’ and ending with her 50th birthday, Ganahl follows one frenetic year in a middle-aged woman’s life. It’s a year of prodigious change, both social and professional, further complicated by hormonal upheaval, family issues, and the stunning realization that — after a life filled with too many men to count —she may be single for the rest of it! A novelized memoir. Viking Books.
Still Water Saints. By Alex Espinoza. A debut novel centered around Botanica Oshun, a religous supply store in the town of Agua Mansa. Weaving together an eventful year in the life of Perla Portilla, the botanicas owner, with the stories of her customersincluding a young woman determined to lose weight, a shoplifting speed addict, a streetwise Chicana muralist, a drag queen turned parent, and an immigrant boy fearful for his life the novel presents a tapestry of changing lives in Californias Inland Empire. The book was simultaneously in a Spanish edition (Los santos de Agua Mansa, California).The author graduated from the MFA program at UC-Irvine and lives in Riverside. Random House.
The Watchman: A Joe Pike Novel. By Robert Crais. Larkin Conner Barkley lives like the City of Angels is hers for the taking. Young and rich, she speeds through the city during its loneliest hours, blowing through red after red in her Aston Martin as if running for her life. Until out of nowhere a car appears, and with it the metal-on-metal explosion of a terrible accident. Dazed, Larkin attempts to help the other victims. And finds herself the sole witness in a secret federal investigation. Simon & Schuster.
Poetry/Short Stories . February, 2007
Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present . What’s like to get bitten by a zombie? To live through a bioweapon attack? To have every aspect of your life governed by invisible ants? Cory Doctorow’s collection of novellas offers sci-fi tales that explore the possibilities of information technology ? and its various uses ? run amok. Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Criminal of Poverty: Growing up Homeless in America. By Lisa Gray-Garcia. The author tells her story, her mother’s and grandmother’s too. Three generations of poor women in America. “It is illegal to be homeless in America,” she writes. “Poverty is a violent crime.” City Lights Publishing.
Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers. By Amy Stewart. The author takes us inside the flower trade ? from the hybridizers, who create new varieties in the laboratory, to the growers, who produce flowers by the millions (often in a factory-like setting), to the Dutch auctioneers, who set the bar (and the price), and ultimately to the neighborhood florists orchestrating the mind-boggling demands of Valentine’s and Mother’s Day. There’s the breeder intent on developing the first blue rose; an eccentric horticultural legend who created the world’s most popular lily; a grower of gerberas of every color imaginable; and the equivalent of a Tiffany diamond: the “Forever Young” rose. Stewart lives in Northern California. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders . By Aimee Liu. In 1979, Liu penned the memoir Solitaire, in which she described her battle with anorexia. Now, three decades later, the Southern California author shares her story and those of her peers who are still struggling to understand the role anorexia and bulimia have played in their lives. Warner Books.
Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul . By Edward Humes. What should we teach our children about where we come from? Is evolution good science? Is it a lie? Is it incompatible with faith? Did Charles Darwin really say man came from monkeys? What happens when a town school board decides to confront such questions head-on, thrusting its students, then an entire community, onto the front lines of America’s culture wars? Humes goes behind the scenes of the recent war on evolution, the epic court case on teaching “intelligent design” it spawned, and the national struggle over what Americans believe about human origins. Ecco/HarperCollins.
US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man . By Charlie LeDuff. Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT writer takes part in a Burning Man festival in Nevada, clad in a Mohawk and little else; trains with the sadhearted Russian clown of a traveling circus; leads a cavalry charge down the Little Bighorn River with war reenactors; joins a C-level professional football team; infiltrates a West Oakland bike gang that holds fight parties; travels with Appalachian snake handlers and tent revivalists; and covers a cowboy love story at a gay rodeo. Penguin Press.
The Way of the Thumb. By Oscar Villalon. The San Francisco Chronicle book editor pens a short guide to thumb wrestling. 826 Books.
Fiction . Poetry/Short Stories . Nonfiction . Children’s/Young Adult
The Adventures of the Pisco Kid. By Michael Standaert. Pisco, a rodent exterminator by trade, is groomed by his mother to be a messiah, a burden he wants no part of. After an unfortunate bat bite, a series of visions and mishaps lead Pisco to venture off in search of a mysterious girl who had accidentally been sending him postcards. A surreal and satirical journey through American myth. Standaert lives in Palo Alto.Arriviste Press.
Bird of Another Heaven . By James D. Houston. The story of California woman, half Indian, half Hawaiian, who became consort and confidante to the last king of Hawaii. The story is told by her great-grandson, Sheridan Brody, a Bay Area talk show host, whose life has reached an unexpected standstill. He can’t quite commit to his Japanese-American girlfriend and her five-year-old son. A corporate merger may soon threaten his job. But when he receives an on-air call from a woman claiming to be his grandmother, Sheridan feels compelled to uncover all he can about this previously unknown branch of his family. Knopf.
A Far Country. By Daniel Mason. From the author of The Piano Tuner, a new novel about a young girl’s journey through a vast, unnamed country in search of her brother. Mason lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Knopf.
Storm Runners. By T. Jefferson Parker. Deputy Sheriff Matt Stromsoe has gone through hell and back, but now he’s reclaiming his life, starting over as bodyguard to a TV news reporter. Easy job, simple life. Everything above board, no secrets to keep. Yeah, right. Morrow.
Woman of Ill Fame. By Erika Mailman. A tale of murder, sex and intrigue in Gold Rush San Francisco.Looking for a better life, Nora Simms sails from the East Coast to San Francisco with a plan for success: to strike it rich by trading on her good looks. But when a string of murders claims several fellow prostitutes, Nora grows uneasy with how closely linked all of the victims are to her. Even her rise to the top of her profession and a move to the fashionable part of town don’t shelter her from the danger, and she must distinguish friend from foe in a race to discover the identity of the killer. Heyday.
You Don’t Love Me Yet: A Novel. By Jonathan Lethem. Novelist serves up a send-up of the alternative band scene, the city of Los Angeles, and the genre of romantic comedy. Doubleday.
Poetry/Short Stories . March 2007
The Islands Project: Poems For Sappho. By Eloise Klein Healy. And just how does one talk to Sappho and what does one say? Red Hen Press.
No Time to Nap. By Mike Madison. Illustrated by Mary Peterson. Adapted from real to-do lists of this author/farmer, No Time to Nap takes readers on a whimsical tour through one farmer’s yearly routine. A Great Valley Book/Heyday Books.
Patricia Unterman’s San Francisco Food Lover’s Pocket Guide. Unterman has been a San Francisco food critic formore than three decades and also is the chef/owner of the Hayes Street Grill. The compact volume tucks easily into a hip pocket and includes bakeries, bars, butchers, delis, cheese shops, confectioners and wine shops, along with an index for various cravings. Ten Speed Press.
Poor People. By William T. Vollmann. “Why are you poor?” asked National Book Award winner Vollmann. Thais blamed past lives, Mexicans blamed the rich, and Yemenis wouldn’t blame anyone for fear of offending Allah. Ecco Books.
‘The Royal Nonesuch: Or, What Will I Do When I Grow Up? By Glasgow Phillips. Scott Timberg of the LA Times describes Phillips as “a Los Angeles writer whose new memoir gives new meaning to the term `failing upward.’ ” Grove Press, Black Cat.
The Water Will Hold You: A Skeptic Learns to Pray. By Lindsey Crittenden. Bay Area author writes about how learning to pray helped her through the death of her brother and parents. Harmony.
Children’s/Young Adult . March, 2007
Angels on Sunset Boulevard . By Melissa de la Cruz. This novel is a fast-paced story of the hot boys and beautiful girls who soon discover there is a dark side to Tinseltown’s bright lights (12 and up). The author lives in Los Angeles. Simon & Schuster.
Fiction .Poetry/Short Stories . Nonfiction . Cookbooks/Crafts/Gardens
Fiction . April 2007
The Gravedigger. By Peter Grandbois. Northern California author’s’ debut novel is set in southern Spain, told through the voice of Juan Rodrigo, the town’s gravedigger who possesses the ability to hear the voices of the dead and to tell their stories to the living. Chronicle Books.
A Handbook to Luck. By Cristina Garcia. From the author of Dreaming in Cuban and Monkey Hunting, this novel takes readers into the lives of three children: Enrique (Cuban and living in Southern California with his magician father), Marta (impoverished in San Salvador) and Leila (an upper-middle class girl from Tehran. Over the course of twenty years, the lives of these characters twist and intertwine. Garcia lives in the Napa Valley. Knopf.
Teach the Free Man: Stories. By Peter Nathaniel Malae. The twelve short stories in Teach the Free Man revolve around characters both inside and outside of the California prison system. The author lives in Santa Clara. Swallow Press.
Poetry/Short Stories . April, 2007
California Transit: Stories and a Novella. By Diane Lefer. Southern California: land of dislocation and assimilation, a place Lefer knows well. In California Transit, she zeroes-in on a Mexican woman detained indefinitely by immigration officials, isolating her from her American family; a zoo employee considering what to do with a euthanized antelope’s head; and, in the title novella, a lonely woman, riding buses all day, who cannot avert the violence building within her. This collection explores the difference between justice and law. Sarabande Books
The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry. Edited by Francisco Aragon. Here readers will discover 25 emerging voices including Naomi Ayala, Richard Blanco, David Dominguez, Gina Franco, Sheryl Luna, and Urayon Noel. University of Arizona Press.
Chief Marin: Leader, Rebel, and Legend. By Betty Goerke. Its a little known fact that the San Francisco Bay Area’s Marin County is named after a Coast Miwok chief who achieved notoriety for defying Spanish authority over his people. Anthropologist and archaeologist Goerke has pieced together a portrait of the life of this Native American leader, using mission records, ethnographies, explorers’ and missionaries’ diaries and correspondence, and other material. Chief Marin became a leader of Native resistance to Spanish colonization at that critical time when, as the mission system collapsed, California would once again be transformed, this time by Americans. Heyday.
I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids. From the front lines of modern motherhood comes a book that uncovers the guilty secrets of moms today . . . in their own words. The authors live in Northern California. Chronicle Books.
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. By Anne LaMott. A follow-up to her bestselling Plan B, Grace (Eventually) is a personal exploration of the faith and grace all around us. Riverhead Books.
Lee Miller: A Life. By Carolyn Burke. The story of Vogue model, Surrealist muse, and World War II photojournalist Lee Miller. Burke lives in Santa Cruz. University of Chicago.
The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk: A Century by the Sea. By the Santa Cruz Seaside Company. Three million visitors a year make their way to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which celebrates it centennial this year and still features the Giant Dipper rollercoaster (built in 1924) and Loof Carousel (built in 1911). This new book is a photo album, history book and scrapbook. Ten Speed Press.
Cookbooks/Crafts/Gardens . April, 2007
Antipasti: Fabulous Appetizers and Small Plates. By Joyce Goldstein. Photographs by Paolo Nobile. With growing numbers of restaurants specializing in “small plates,” the antipasto is back in style. Goldstein delves into the history of antipasti and offers a host of recipes. She is a chef, author, teacher, and Mediterranean cooking expert who lives in San Francisco. Chronicle books.
Fiction . May 2007
Hick. By Andrea Portes. Novel tells the story of Luli McMullen?feisty, precocious, and out on her own at 13. Luli is running away from Palmyra, Nebraska to Las Vegas, where she plans to escape her disturbing present and even less hopeful future by finding herself a sugar daddy. That Luli finds trouble on the road almost immediately is no surprise. The author lives in Los Angeles. Unbridled Books
The Immaculate Complexion. By Edie Bloom. A vintage-loving temp lands a PR job with the world’s largest cosmetics company and has to contend with high-concept product launches gone spectacularly awry, tainted Botox and vengeful Park Avenue Princesses–all while preserving her individuality and her fledgling romance with a cheese connoisseur who doesn’t know she’s lactose intolerant. The author lives in Silverlake. Dorchester.
Point Surrender. By Anne Carter. This romantic mysterytakes place in fictional Northern California lighthouse, Point Surrender. The lighthouse’s last keeper has been dead for more than 25 years. Will the journal he kept reveal why he died in the old lighthouse, and what happened to his missing family? Echelon Press.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel. By Michael Chabon. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist imagines if Alaska, not Israel, had become the homeland for the Jews after World War II. HarperCollins.
This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood . By Jack Valenti. A leading figure in American politics and culture for nearly five decades recounts his journey from Houston to Washington to Hollywood. Harmony.
Fiction . Nonfiction . Travel
Fiction . June 2006
Michael Tolliver Lives. By Armistead Maupin. The author revisits some of his beloved San Francisco characters. HarperCollins.
Peony in Love. By Lisa See. Using historical events as a backdrop, See weaves a tale of love and destiny, desire and sorrow as she takes readers back to seventeenth-century China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed. Random House.
Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles, and other Quinceanera Stories. Edited by Adriana Lopez. Fifteen Latino writers, men and women alike, share their memories. Rayo.
The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty. by Julia Flynn Siler. The story of the immigrant family that built and then spectacularly lost — a global wine empire. Gotham Books.
The Other Woman: Twenty-one Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal. Edited by Victoria Zackheim. The anthology includes pieces from Bay Area writers Jane Smiley, Lynn Freed and Kathleen Archambeau. Warner Books.
California’s Central Coast: The Ultimate Winery Guide. By Mira Advani Honeycutt. Nearly two million people visit Central Coast wineries each year, many drawn to the scenery and wines of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and inspired by to the success of the movie “Sideways.” Honeycutt lives in Los Angeles. Chronicle Books.
Fiction . July 2006
Sammy’s House. By Kristin Gore. In her second novel, Gore introduces late twenty-something Sammy Joyce — hypochondriac, klutz, jumper-to-conclusions. She’s in the White House as a health-care advisor to the newly elected administration. All the chips seem to be falling into place: She’s living with her best friend, successfully keeping her pet Japanese fighting fish alive, and reveling in her romance with an up-and-coming Washington Post reporter. However, soon after taking office, the administration finds itself deep in a red-hot White House scandal. Hyperion.
The Best of Surfer Magazine. Edited by Chris Mauro and Steve Hawk. Surfer has collected its eclectic array of surf journalism into one volume, from editorials and travel pieces to fiction and humor writing. Each piece is introduced by the editors and accompanied by the cover of the Surfer issue in which the article first appeared. Chronicle Books.
Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West. By Scott Martelle. A look at the nation’s most violent labor dispute, in which more than 75 people died in southern Colorado. The author is a Los Angeles Times staff writer. Rutgers University Press.
Fiction . October 2006
Cocaine and Blue Eyes. By Fred Zackel. The tough tale of a semi-pro detective hunting high and low in San Francisco society for a missing person who maybeisn’t missing, on behalf of a client who is without a doubt dead. This is a reissue of a 1978 book, which also was made into a TV movie. Point Blank.
Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography . By David Michaelis. The author examines the life of the Santa Rosa creator of the cartoon strip featuring Charlie Brown and Snoopy. At the time of Schulz’s death in February 2000, Peanuts appeared in more than 2600 newspapers in 75 countries. HarperCollins.
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