Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (May 16, 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 12, 2024.

Two new books debut on the list this week. Colm Tóibín’s latest title, Long Island, takes readers to New York in the 1970s. After a mysterious stranger appears on her doorstep, Eilis Lacey, the heroine of Tóibín’s previous novel Brooklyn, must confront the unsavory realities of her marriage to Tony Fiorello. And in the world of thrillers, Rupert Holmes’s Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide answers the question of how to get away with murder. The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts (an academy shrouded in secrecy) can help, as long as there’s an ethical reason for disposing of someone.

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. Long Island, Colm Tóibín, Scribner Book Company, $28
4. Table for Two: Fictions, Amor Towles, Viking, $32
5. The Women, Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s Press, $30

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, Erik Larson, Crown Publishing Group, $35
2. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin, Penguin Press, $32
3. Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Anne Lamott, Riverhead Books, $22
4. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Jonathan Haidt, Penguin Press, $30
5. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie, Random House, $28

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide, Rupert Holmes, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, $18.99
2. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
3. The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu and Ken Liu (translator), Tor Books, $18.99
4. This Summer Will Be Different, Carley Fortune, Berkley Books, $19
5. The Midnight Library, Matt Haig, Penguin Books, $18

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan, Knopf, $35
2. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Julia Cameron, TarcherPerigee, $19
3. The Eater Guide to Los Angeles, Eater, Abrams Image, $19.99
4. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books, $19.99
5. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Penguin Books, $19

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Women, Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s Press, $30
2. Table for Two: Fictions, Amor Towles, Viking, $32
3. Funny Story, Emily Henry, Berkley, $29
4. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.
5. Long Island, Colm Tóibín, Scribner, $28

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, Erik Larson, Crown, $35
2. Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Anne Lamott, Riverhead Books, $22
3. Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House, and the World, Jen Psaki, Scribner, $28.99
4. An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster, $35
5. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie, Random House, $28

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas, Bloomsbury Publishing, $19
2. The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu and Ken Liu (translator), Tor Books, $18.99
3. Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide, Rupert Holmes, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, $18.99
4. Horse, Geraldine Brooks, Penguin, $19
5. This Summer Will Be Different, Carley Fortune, Berkley Books, $19

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan, Knopf, $35
2. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, Rashid Khalidi, Metropolitan Books, $19.99
3. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, $20
4. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Penguin Books, $19
5. Solito: A Memoir, Javier Zamora, Hogarth, $18. Register for Zamora’s California Book Club event.

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.