Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (December 7, 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 December 3, 2023.

The first bestsellers list of December includes Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason’s imaginative novel North Woods. Set in a large home in New England, North Woods features the generations of human and nonhuman characters who live in the house over 400 years (check out Alta’s review here). And also on the list is Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, another historical novel, which splits the narrative between two young children as they grow up in the years before and during World War II.

For a full list of titles and categories, visit the California Independent Booksellers Alliance.•

Southern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride, Riverhead Books, $28
2. Tom Lake, Ann Patchett, Harper, $30
3. North Woods, Daniel Mason, Random House, $28. Read the Alta review.
4. Resurrection Walk, Michael Connelly, Little, Brown, $30. Read Alta’s coverage of Connelly’s work here.
5. Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros, Red Tower Books, $29.99

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, Penguin Press, $32
2. My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand, Viking, $47
3. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, Rachel Maddow, Crown, $32
4. How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, David Brooks, Random House, $30
5. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Doubleday, $30

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Trust, Hernan Diaz, Riverhead Books, $17
2. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
3. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr, Scribner, $18.99
4. Babel, R.F. Kuang, Harper Voyager, $20
5. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Washington Square Press, $17

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, William Morrow, $16.99
2. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (movie tie-in edition), David Grann, Vintage, $18
3. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Penguin Books, $19
4. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Rashid Khalidi, Picador, $19.99
5. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (30th anniversary edition), Julia Cameron, TarcherPerigee, $19

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride, Riverhead Books, $28
2. Tom Lake, Ann Patchett, Harper, $30
3. The Fraud, Zadie Smith, Penguin Press, $29
4. North Woods, Daniel Mason, Random House, $28. Read the Alta review.
5. Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus, Doubleday, $29

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, Rachel Maddow, Crown, $32
2. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Doubleday, $30
3. Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, Heather Cox Richardson, Viking, $30
4. My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand, Viking, $47
5. How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, David Brooks, Random House, $30

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Trust, Hernan Diaz, Riverhead Books, $17
2. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
3. The Best American Short Stories 2023, Min Jin Lee (editor), Mariner Books, $18.99
4. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr, Scribner, $18.99
5. Babel, R.F. Kuang, Harper Voyager, $20

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (movie tie-in edition), David Grann, Vintage, $18
2. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong, Random House, $20
3. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, $20
4. Solito: A Memoir, Javier Zamora, Hogarth, $18
5. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Rashid Khalidi, Picador, $19.99

Source: California Independent Booksellers Alliance

Elizabeth Casillas

Elizabeth Casillas is an assistant editor at Alta Journal. A graduate of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, she has previously written for the Poly Post and Enspire Magazine.