Books

Excerpt: ‘Desert Notebooks’

In his latest book, author Ben Ehrenreich seeks to imagine an alternative pathway for humanity.

Excerpt: ‘A Kingdom of Tender Colors’
Author Seth Greenland worries he’s not interesting enough to write a…
Excerpt: ‘Unforgetting’
Roberto Lovato uses a backdrop of war and immigration to tell the st…
Excerpt: ‘Recollections of My Nonexistence’
In this excerpt from her memoir, author Rebecca Solnit explores how …
New Beginnings for Books
Alta books editor David L. Ulin finds that amid a crisis, the soul o…
Jan 18, 2021
Where the Heart Is

In Sanctuary, Emily Rapp Black excavates love and loss.
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Jan 12, 2021
Butchering the Mythic West

A long white Cadillac and a pair of John Williams novels help set the story straight about America’s frontier.
Jan 11, 2021
Cowboys Are My Weakness

Julia Claiborne Johnson’s Better Luck Next Time takes place in the 1930s at a Reno, Nevada, divorce ranch.
Jan 8, 2021
Talking With Julia Flynn Siler
The author of The White Devil’s Daughters describes her reporting for Alta Journal on a sexual predator who for decades abused children…
Jan 4, 2021
The Pleasure-Seekers

Myron Brinig’s The Flutter of an Eyelid is the great lost classic of Los Angeles literature.
Dec 28, 2020
A Field Guide to Getting Lost

In Desert Oracle, Ken Layne goes all in on the Mojave’s lore—and lure.
Dec 23, 2020
California Book Club Panelist Picks
West Coast literary experts Lynell George, Marissa K. López, Danzy Senna, David L. Ulin, Oscar Villalon, and Paul Yamazaki reveal their…
Dec 22, 2020
Alta’s Top Book Reviews of 2020
New books from Mike Davis and Jon Wiener, Lynell George, Juan Felipe Herrera, Laila Lalami, Felicia Luna Lemus, Attica Locke, Roberto L…
Dec 21, 2020
City of Angels

In The System, Ryan Gattis uncovers Los Angeles’s corrupted heart.
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Dec 14, 2020
Redemption Song

Walter Mosley transcends genre with The Awkward Black Man.
Dec 11, 2020
Talking with Lynell George
The author of A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky spent four years immersed in the life and work of Octavia E. Butler. This is what sh…
Dec 7, 2020
The Book of Love

Felicia Luna Lemus’s Particulate Matter is a memoir of intimacy and grace.
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Dec 4, 2020
Talking with Ken Layne
The author of Desert Oracle: Volume 1 writes of the Mojave as a “peculiar American environment with...vast skies, strange wildlife, and…
Nov 30, 2020
The Horse’s Mouth

Jane Smiley’s Perestroika in Paris is a fairy tale for adults.
Nov 30, 2020
Talking with Po Bronson

Decoding the World takes on some of our most vexing problems and the emerging technologies that may solve them.