Alta Journal ’s California Bestsellers List (October 30, 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 26, 2025.

Add new releases by two Alta Journal–featured authors to your fall TBR. Michael Connelly, the California Book Club’s April 2022 author, revives his Lincoln Lawyer series in The Proving Ground. In this eighth installment, attorney Mickey Haller takes on a case involving a 16-year-old boy, his murdered ex-girlfriend, and the AI chatbot that urged him to kill her. Julian Brave NoiseCat’s We Survived the Night (read the Alta review) blends personal history with mythology, chronicling North America’s First Peoples—their erasure, resilience, and future.

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

Southern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown, Doubleday, $38
2. The Widow, John Grisham, Doubleday, $32
3. The Proving Ground, Michael Connelly, Little, Brown and Company, $32. Watch the California Book Club event with the author.
4. What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30
5. Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon, Penguin Press, $30. Read the Alta review.

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Knopf, $35
2. 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Viking, $35
3. Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism, Stewart “Brittlestar” Reynolds, Grand Central Publishing, $13
4. 107 Days, Kamala Harris, Simon & Schuster, $30
5. Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy, Joyce Vance, Dutton, $28

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22
2. Mate, Ali Hazelwood, Berkley, $20
3. Intermezzo, Sally Rooney, Picador, $19
4. Bunny, Mona Awad, Penguin, $17
5. Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99

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. Fight Oligarchy, Bernie Sanders, Crown, $14.99
4. How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, David Brooks, Random House Trade Paperbacks, $20
5. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Julia Cameron, TarcherPerigee, $24

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon, Penguin Press, $30. Read the Alta review.
2. The Widow, John Grisham, Doubleday, $32
3. What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30
4. The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown, Doubleday, $38
5. The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman, Pamela Dorman Books, $30

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Knopf, $35
2. Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love, Samin Nosrat, Random House, $45
3. Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy, Joyce Vance, Dutton, $28
4. Always Remember: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm, Charlie Mackesy, Penguin Life, $27
5. We Survived the Night, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Knopf, $30. Read the Alta review.

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Playground, Richard Powers, W.W. Norton & Company, $19.99
2. The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami and Philip Gabriel (translator), Vintage, $19
3. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22
4. Intermezzo, Sally Rooney, Picador, $19
5. Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, David Brooks, Random House Trade Paperbacks, $20
2. Fight Oligarchy, Bernie Sanders, Crown, $14.99
3. Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering, Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books, $21.99
4. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12
5. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, Michael Finkel, Vintage, $18

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.