Alta Journal ’s California Bestsellers List (October 9, 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 October 5, 2025.

Check out two recent releases featured on this week’s bestsellers list. Richard Osman returns with The Impossible Fortune, the latest installment in his Thursday Murder Club series. When a guest goes missing at a wedding, returning characters Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim reunite to solve another mystery. In Heart the Lover, author Lily King tells an unconventional story. Decades after leaving a college love triangle, narrator Jordan is forced to reckon with the choices she made and the people she left behind.

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

Southern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman, Pamela Dorman Books, $30
2. What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30
3. Katabasis, R.F. Kuang, Harper Voyager, $32
4. The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown, Doubleday, $38
5. Alchemised, SenLinYu, Del Rey, $35

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. 107 Days, Kamala Harris, Simon & Schuster, $30
2. Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love, Samin Nosrat, Random House, $45
3. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, Jill Lepore, Liveright, $39.99
4. 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
5. Poems and Prayers, Matthew McConaughey, Crown, $29

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman and Ros Schwartz (translator), Transit Books, $16.95
2. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22
3. Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar, Vintage, $18. Watch the author speak at a California Book Club event.
4. The Lion Women of Tehran, Marjan Kamali, Gallery Books, $18.99
5. Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout, Random House Trade Paperbacks, $18

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12
2. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, Michael Finkel, Vintage, $18
3. Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering, Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books, $21.99
4. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Penguin Books, $19
5. The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, Hampton Sides, Vintage, $19

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman, Pamela Dorman Books, $30
2. The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown, Doubleday, $38
3. What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30
4. Alchemised, SenLinYu, Del Rey, $35
5. Heart the Lover, Lily King, Grove Press, $28

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. 107 Days, Kamala Harris, Simon & Schuster, $30
2. Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love, Samin Nosrat, Random House, $45
3. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, Jill Lepore, Liveright, $39.99
4. All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation, Elizabeth Gilbert, Riverhead Books, $35
5. Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy, Mary Roach, W.W. Norton & Company, $28.99

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99
2. Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout, Random House Trade Paperbacks, $18
3. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22
4. The Life Impossible, Matt Haig, Penguin, $19
5. The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami and Philip Gabriel (translator), Vintage, $19

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12
2. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, $20
3. The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan, Knopf, $36. Read a recap of the California Book Club event.
4. Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering, Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books, $21.99
5. Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, Yuval Noah Harari, Random House Trade Paperbacks, $25

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.