Alta Journal’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 and analysis of classic L.A. literature, this California Book Award–winning title identifies everything we’ve gotten wrong about the “Great American City-State.” Speaking of the classics: Alta’s 2022 cover star Joan Didion returns to the list with her essential novel Play It As It Lays. The late writer’s descriptions of Las Vegas and Hollywood in the 1960s will spark nostalgia in even the youngest Didion reader.

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

Southern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Funny Story, Emily Henry, Berkley, $29
2. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.
3. The Women, Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s Press, $30
4. Table for Two: Fictions, Amor Towles, Viking, $32
5. The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo, Flatiron Books, $29.99

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, Penguin Press, $32
2. An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster, $35
3. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt, Penguin Press, $30
4. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie, Random House, $28
5. Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Anne Lamott, Riverhead Books, $22

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
2. Big Swiss, Jen Beagin, Scribner, $17
3. The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Tor Books, $18.99
4. Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18. Read Alta’s Didion primer.
5. Just for the Summer, Abby Jimenez, Forever, $17.99

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan, Knopf, $35
2. All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, William Morrow, $16.99
3. Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles, Rosecrans Baldwin, Picador, $19. Read Baldwin’s writing in Alta.
4. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (movie tie-in edition), David Grann, Vintage, $18
5. The Eater Guide to Los Angeles, Eater, Abrams Image, $19.99

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Funny Story, Emily Henry, Berkley, $29
2. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.
3. Table for Two: Fictions, Amor Towles, Viking, $32
4. The Women, Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s Press, $30
5. The Paris Novel, Ruth Reichl, Random House, $29

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie, Random House, $28
2. Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Anne Lamott, Riverhead Books, $22
3. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt, Penguin Press, $30
4. An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster, $35
5. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, Penguin Press, $32

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
2. The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Tor Books, $18.99
3. Horse, Geraldine Brooks, Penguin, $19
4. Happy Place, Emily Henry, Berkley Books, $19
5. A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan, Knopf, $35
2. All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, William Morrow, $16.99
3. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books, $19.99
4. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, $20
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.