Alta Online • 30th January 2025

Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (January 30, 2025)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending January 26, 2025.This week’s list includes two popular titles. First is Onyx Storm, the latest installment in Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series. After 18 months at Basgiath War College, a brutal military academy, Violet Sorrengail heads into unfamiliar lands to gather allies for the battl...

Alta Online • 23rd January 2025

Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (January 23, 2025)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending January 19, 2025.This week’s list features two powerful novels. First, Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler, shows a world devastated by climate change and economic collapse, where California suffers from a severe water shortage and fires. In this chaos is 15-year-old Lauren Olamin...

Alta Online • 16th January 2025

Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (January 16, 2025)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending January 12, 2025.This week’s bestsellers list features two exciting new titles. First is Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. Blending insights from philosophy, religion, and literature, Burkeman offers practical...

Alta Online • 31st December 2024

11 New Books for January

This month, we’ve got our eyes on Call Her Freedom, Alternative Facts, and nine other titles by writers on the West.1AFLAME: LEARNING FROM SILENCE, BY PICO IYER Riverhead BooksThe book of Ecclesiastes states that “to everything there is a season.” Iyer learns to respond to the seasons of life by making more than 100 pilgrimages to a small hermitage in Big Sur. In practicing silence, he discovers something deeper: how to find and keep joy. Along the way, Iyer shares his revelations and affirms th...

Alta Online • 12th December 2024

Q&A with Susan Howland of Alzheimer’s Association

The California Book Club’s December selection, Goodbye, Vitamin, by author Rachel Khong, centers on a family living in Southern California and grappling with the progression of their father’s Alzheimer’s disease. Khong constructs the book as a series of journal entries written by the daughter, Ruth, that capture the emotional strains that families and caregivers often experience when their loved one seems to be slipping away and memories are no longer shared. Despite the difficult circumstances...

Alta Online • 29th November 2024

10 New Books for December

This month, we’ve got our eyes on How We Know Our Time Travelers, The Last One, and eight other titles by writers on the West.1CABIN: OFF THE GRID ADVENTURES WITH A CLUELESS CRAFTSMAN, BY PATRICK HUTCHISONSt. Martin’s PressWashington State–based journalist Hutchison gets a sudden notion to purchase a 120-square-foot cabin in the forests of the Cascade Range. He sets out to renovate the structure, a process that takes six years. Hutchison endures mishaps and setbacks but ultimately glories in the...

Alta Online • 19th September 2024

<i>Alta Journal</i>’s California Bestsellers List (September 19, 2024)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending September 15, 2024.This week, the excellence of California Book Club authors is on full display in the literary world and on the bestsellers list. James, the latest novel by Percival Everett, the CBC’s May 2023 author, was recently long-listed for a 2024 National Book Award for Fiction....

Alta Online • 6th August 2024

Q&A: A Conversation with the Women of Líderes Campesinas

Novelist Helena María Viramontes deftly captures farmworking conditions of the mid-20th century in the August California Book Club selection, Under the Feet of Jesus. In carefully drawn descriptions and scenes, the book reveals the grueling circumstances workers are forced to toil under: constant exposure to the sun and toxic chemicals, minimal breaks, a lack of safe drinking water, and the push to always keep working faster and faster.In the real world, however, consumers rarely witness the phy...

Alta Online • 2nd July 2024

Spotlight on a Literary Venture: Betty

Betty Books is an energized, synergistic collective. We work with each other, for each other.” This is how Haley Hach—author of a forthcoming collection of short stories spotlighting women in rural America, When We’re Ready—describes publisher WTAW Press’s new imprint, Betty (known on social media as Betty Books).Named after WTAW publisher Peg Alford Pursell’s mother—a literary enthusiast who began to value her autonomy later in life—the imprint was born in May 2023. WTAW sought to promote and e...

Alta Online • 27th June 2024

<i>Alta Journal</i>’s California Bestsellers List (June 27, 2024)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending June 23, 2024.This week’s bestsellers list debuts a few titles just in time for summer. Catherine Newman’s recently published novel, Sandwich, follows Rocky, a woman stuck between two generations—her elderly parents and her rapidly growing children—all vacationing together in the family’...

Alta Online • 13th June 2024

Music of ‘Solito’

Everywhere we’ve been, the same artists follow us. Los Temerarios. Los Bukis. Bronco. Control Machete. Vilma Palma e Vampiros. Los Yonic’s. Grupo Límite.” In his memoir, Solito, the June California Book Club selection, author Javier Zamora traces his 3,000-mile journey from El Salvador to the United States—and shares the music he was exposed to on the trek. Music has an immense effect on how we perceive ourselves, others, and our situation, as this month’s book beautifully recognizes.Boleros, ra...

Alta Online • 11th June 2024

Running with Coyotes

I ’ve never seen a coyote. I’ve seen more people called coyotes than animals,” a nine-year-old Javier Zamora thinks when he happens upon a rotting coyote carcass in the California Book Club’s June selection, Solito. After excruciating days of battling thirst and weariness in the dry desert heat, Zamora, known as Chepito, and his fellow migrants from El Salvador, referred to in the book as the Six, stumble upon the wild canine, the animal from which migrant smugglers derive their name. Although s...

Alta Online • 30th May 2024

<i>Alta Journal</i> ’s California Bestsellers List (May 30, 2024)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending May 26, 2024.On the list this week is the California Book Club’s June pick, Solito, by Javier Zamora. The memoir recounts nine-year-old Zamora’s difficult and dangerous journey from El Salvador to the United States. Join the book club on Thursday, June 20, for a conversation with author...

Alta Online • 2nd May 2024

<i>Alta Journal</i>’s California Bestsellers List (May 2, 2024)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending April 28, 2024.This week’s bestsellers list features two authors in Alta’s orbit. Topping the charts is California Book Club contributor Rosecrans Baldwin’s deeply reported 2021 book, Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles. Using interviews with notorious Angelenos an...

Alta Online • 5th March 2024

Tracing Desert Trails

Laila Lalami has a way with words. Not only is she able to bring a varied cast of characters to life, but she is also able to make readers feel at home in the setting of this month’s California Book Club pick, The Other Americans. By using absorbing imagery and vernacular language common to Southern California, she immerses readers in Victorville, San Bernardino, Yucca Valley, and Joshua Tree.Throughout the novel, her fondness for the region is palpable. She describes the area as heavenlike, det...

Alta Online • 4th January 2024

<i>Alta Journal</i>’s California Bestsellers List (January 4, 2024)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending December 31, 2023.

The new year brings new books to discover, and this week, the bestsellers list features two prominent authors with upcoming releases in 2024. First up will be Sarah J. Maas with the third book in her ever-popular Crescent City series, House of Flame and Shadow. Fans o

Alta Online • 21st December 2023

Catch ’Em Before They’re Gone: Winter Art Shows

Ai WeiweiOngoingLos Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles, CaliforniaAi Weiwei has woven together centuries-old heartbreak and the current political climate in his Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition, Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads. The 12 bronze sculptures mimic those originally crafted in Beijing in the 1750s for the imperial gardens and palace, Yuanmingyuan, which were stolen almost a century later by Anglo-French military forces. The theft still feels raw for many, and the decision...

Alta Online • 24th October 2023

Remembering the Future

Our November California Book Club pick, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, by Deborah A. Miranda, opens with a prayer composed by Louise J. Miranda Ramirez, Ohlone–Costanoan Esselen Nation chairperson and sister of the book’s author. Within this prayer, Ramirez calls to the Ancestors, the Creator, the Grandfathers and Grandmothers, promising not to forget their stories and to raise the children of the nation to be conscious and aware of their past and the weight that comes with it. Within the Ohlone–...

Alta Online • 5th January 2023

Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (January 4, 2023)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending January 1, 2023.

California author David Arora debuts on the list with All That the Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms. Arora provides useful information on more than 200 edible and poisonous fungi. Also making its first appearance is Alex Michaelides’s debu

Alta Online • 21st December 2022

Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (December 21, 2022)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending December 18, 2022.

With the holiday season upon us, the bestsellers list is a great place to look for last-minute gifts. For the aspiring writer on your list, The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, is an essential guide to unlocking creativity. And for those who like to entertain, festive

Alta Online • 14th December 2022

‘Gordo’ and the Backbone of California

Around 2.4 million farmworkers work across the United States, and of those, 68 percent are foreign-born workers. The job involves toiling long hours under the sun as well as meeting often difficult quotas for produce picked.

California is where a significant number of the country’s farmworkers, around one-third, work. These farmworkers produce over a third of the nation’s fruits, nuts, and vegetables and generate $50 billion in revenue for the state, yet they deal with high levels of poverty an

Alta Online • 14th December 2022

Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (December 14, 2022)

Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending December 11, 2022, with reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance.

The second of Pulitzer Prize–winning author Cormac McCarthy’s two related volumes debuts on the list this week. Stella Maris, , is a candid look at grief and longing. Also making its first appearance in our rankings is Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change

Alta Online • 7th December 2022

Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (December 7, 2022)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending December 4, 2022.

This week brings us lighthearted reads and charming protagonists perfect for upcoming winter days spent curled up with a book. California-born author Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry—a familiar title on the bestsellers list—takes readers back to 1960s California, w

Alta Online • 30th November 2022

Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (November 30, 2022)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending November 27, 2022.

In addition to the top sellers from big-name authors like Patti Smith and Michelle Obama, this week’s rankings include two volumes of 2022’s best writing. The Best American Short Stories 2022, selected by writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer, along with