Alta Journal ’s California Bestsellers List (January 29, 2026)

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 January 25, 2026.

This week’s list features two nonfiction titles that address different facets of culture. Just in time for the Super Bowl, Football, by Chuck Klosterman, breaks down how one of the most watched sports in America is ingrained in every part of our lives—even for those who don’t watch it. In Want, editor (and actor) Gillian Anderson presents anonymously written sexual fantasies sent in by women worldwide.

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

Southern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Correspondent, Virginia Evans, Crown, $28
2. Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy, Ballantine Books, $30
3. Heart the Lover, Lily King, Grove Press, $28
4. What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30
5. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Kiran Desai, Hogarth, $32

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster, Jacob Soboroff, Mariner Books, $30
2. A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, Sophie Elmhirst, Riverhead Books, $28
3. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad, Knopf, $28
4. Football, Chuck Klosterman, Penguin Press, $32
5. Bread of Angels: A Memoir, Patti Smith, Random House, $30

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid, Carina Press, $18.99
2. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22
3. The Long Game, Rachel Reid, Carina Press, $18.99
4. Theo of Golden, Allen Levi, Atria Books, $20
5. Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell, Vintage, $19

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, William Morrow, $16.99
2. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12
3. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Vintage, $21
4. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor, Riverhead Books, $20
5. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Correspondent, Virginia Evans, Crown, $28
2. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Kiran Desai, Hogarth, $32
3. Heart the Lover, Lily King, Grove Press, $28
4. Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy, Ballantine Books, $30
5. What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Viking, $35
2. A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, Sophie Elmhirst, Riverhead Books, $28
3. 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
4. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad, Knopf, $28
5. Bread of Angels: A Memoir, Patti Smith, Random House, $30

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell, Vintage, $19
2. Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid, Carina Press, $18.99
3. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22
4. Theo of Golden, Allen Levi, Atria Books, $20
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. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, $20
3. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Vintage, $21
4. I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy, Simon and Schuster, $19.99
5. Want, Anonymous and Gillian Anderson (editor), Abrams Press, $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.