Alta Journal ’s California Bestsellers List (June 12, 2025)

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 June 8, 2025.

Dive into two exciting adventures with selections from this week’s bestsellers list. First up is Atmosphere: A Love Story, a new novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Joan Goodwin, a professor at Rice University in the 1980s, is selected to be one of the first female scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. As Goodwin and her team work to get to space, a tender story of love and camaraderie unfolds. Then travel from space to sea with The Wide Wide Sea, a work of nonfiction by Hampton Sides. Here, Sides traces the final voyage of Captain James Cook and recounts the peril and endurance that defined this exploration.

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

Southern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Atmosphere: A Love Story, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Ballantine Books, $30
2. The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong, Penguin Press, $30
3. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.
4. Never Flinch, Stephen King, Scribner, $32
5. Great Big Beautiful Life, Emily Henry, Berkley, $29

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About, Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins, Hay House, $29.99
2. Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, Penguin Press, $32
3. Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story About the Entrepreneur’s Messy Path to Success, Kass Lazerow and Michael Lazerow, Amplify Publishing, $26
4. Notes to John, Joan Didion, Knopf, $32. Read Alta’s review.
5. Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Avid Reader Press, $30

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Problematic Summer Romance, Ali Hazelwood, Berkley, $20
2. Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99
3. Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar, Vintage, $18. Watch the author speak at a California Book Club event.
4. All Fours, Miranda July, Riverhead Books, $19. Read the Alta review.
5. I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman and Ros Schwartz (translator), Transit Books, $16.95

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Vintage, $21
2. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12
3. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Julia Cameron, TarcherPerigee, $20
4. All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, William Morrow, $16.99
5. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, Michael Finkel, Vintage, $18

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong, Penguin Press, $30
2. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.
3. Atmosphere: A Love Story, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Ballantine Books, $30
4. Great Big Beautiful Life, Emily Henry, Berkley, $29
5. Never Flinch, Stephen King, Scribner, $32

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Avid Reader Press, $30
2. The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About, Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins, Hay House, $29.99
3. Is a River Alive?, Robert Macfarlane, W.W. Norton & Company, $31.99
4. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Robin Wall Kimmerer and John Burgoyne (illustrator), Scribner, $20
5. Mark Twain, Ron Chernow, Penguin Press, $45

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99
2. Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar, Vintage, $18. Watch the author speak at a California Book Club event.
3. All Fours, Miranda July, Riverhead Books, $19. Read the Alta review.
4. The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese, Grove Press, $22
5. The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley, Avid Reader Press, $18.99

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, Hampton Sides, Vintage, $19
2. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Vintage, $21
3. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12
4. The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, Zoë Schlanger, Harper Perennial, $19.99
5. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, $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.