Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (April 11, 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 7, 2024.

From Amor Towles, the author of A Gentleman in Moscow, comes Table for Two, a collection of six short stories and a novella that are set in 2000s New York City and 1930s Los Angeles respectively and feature a wide cast of personalities. One throughline: in all the stories, two characters meet at a table for two, where the course of their futures rests on their next conversation. Also featured on this week’s list is California native Abby Jimenez’s latest novel, Just for the Summer. The story has all the ingredients for a perfect beach read: a curse, a cottage in the Midwest, and a blooming romance.

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

Southern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Table for Two: Fictions, Amor Towles, Viking, $32
2. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.
3. The Women, Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s Press, $30
4. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride, Riverhead Books, $28
5. City in Ruins, Don Winslow, William Morrow, $32

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, Penguin Press, $32
2. Think This, Not That: 12 Mindshifts to Breakthrough Limiting Beliefs and Become Who You Were Born to Be, Dr. Josh Axe, Thomas Nelson, $29.99
3. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt, Penguin Press, $30
4. Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, Kara Swisher, Simon & Schuster, $30
5. Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, Charles Duhigg, Random House, $30

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Tor Books, $18.99
2. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
3. Dune, Frank Herbert, Ace Books, $18
4. A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
5. Just for the Summer, Abby Jimenez, Forever, $17.99

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. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Julia Cameron, TarcherPerigee, $19
3. All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, William Morrow, $16.99
4. The Eater Guide to Los Angeles, Eater, Abrams Image, $19.99
5. Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love, Amir Levine, MD, and Rachel S.F. Heller, MA, TarcherPerigee, $17

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.
2. Table for Two: Fictions, Amor Towles, Viking, $32
3. The Women, Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s Press, $30
4. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride, Riverhead Books, $28
5. Wandering Stars, Tommy Orange, Knopf, $29. Read the Alta review.

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt, Penguin Press, $30
2. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, Penguin Press, $32
3. Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, Kara Swisher, Simon & Schuster, $30
4. Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, Fareed Zakaria, W.W. Norton & Company, $29.99
5. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Doubleday, $30

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
2. Dune, Frank Herbert, Ace Books, $18
3. The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Tor Books, $18.99
4. Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton, Picador, $19
5. Horse, Geraldine Brooks, Penguin, $19

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. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Rashid Khalidi, Picador, $19.99
3. Solito: A Memoir, Javier Zamora, Hogarth, $18. Register for Zamora’s California Book Club event.
4. All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, William Morrow, $16.99
5. Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond, Crown, $20

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.