California Memoir

Nearly two years after the disappearance of 27-year-old Laci Peterson, her husband Scott was found guilty for the murder of his wife and their unborn son. According to the jurors, it wasn't one thing that condemned Scott Peterson—it was everything. Despite a series of internal battles that brought them to the brink of a mistrial, the jurors ultimately decided Peterson's fate.

In 1891, a suffragist and social reformer named Alzire Chevaillier launched a moral crusade to destroy Fountaingrove, a utopian spiritualist community in northern California. Chevaillier accused the colony's leader, the poet and prophet Thomas Lake Harris, of perverting the teachings of the Bible to promote a “new sexology” that was “worse than Mormonism.” She insisted that Harris used magical powers of hypnosis to take sexual and financial advantage of his followers, turning them into a “spiritual harem” that practiced “free love” and other gross immoralities.

In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.

She was leaning against the door. Her smile was a sickly twisted grimace; the sort a prisoner gives a judge when he's asked if he has anything to say before he's sentenced. Russell Haxby is a ruthless used-car salesman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. In this classic of hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford crafts a wry, sardonic tale of hypocrisy, intrigue, and lust set in San Francisco in the early '50s.

As John Freeman writes in California Rewritten, "Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people—at the highest level—has been coming out of California and from Californians for decades now." Freeman, one of the sharpest editors working today, has followed the evolution of California's literary life since his teenage years in Sacramento. In over fifty essays inspired by his hosting of Alta Journal's popular California Book Club, he offers an essential road map to California literature now.

When Jack and Denny Smith decided to build a vacation dream house in Baja, California, they had no idea they were entering a phase of their lives "that would capture the fancy of readers throughout the United States". Through a series of strange and whimsical adventures, they would find that building a house takes God and Mr. Gomez.

Claus Spreckels (1828-1908) emigrated from his homeland of Germany to the United States with only seventy-five cents in his pocket, built a sugar empire, and became one of the richest Americans in history. Migrating to San Francisco after the gold rush, Spreckels built the largest sugar beet factory of its kind in the United States. When Spreckels gave America its first sugar cube, he became the “Sugar King.” The indomitable Spreckels was a colorful and complicated character on both sides of the Pacific.

Each week, millions of viewers tune into The Discovery Channel to watch their favorite dysfunctional American family, the Teutuls. Their hit TV show, American Chopper, features Paul Teutul, Sr., and his sons Paul, Jr., and Mikey, along with a supporting cast of mechanics and friends. Together, they create some of the most incredible and outrageous motorcycles in the world.

New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende celebrates the pleasures of the sensual life in this rich, joyful and slyly humorous book, a combination of personal narrative and treasury of erotic lore. Under the aegis of the Goddess of Love, Isabel Allende uses...

A wondrous, uproarious, and surprisingly informative account of a year spend surfing, Caught Inside marks the arrival of an exuberant new voice of the outdoors. This remarkable narrative of Daniel Duane’s life on the water is enhanced by good-humored explanations of the physics of wave dynamics, the intricate art of surfboard design, and lyrical, sharp-eyed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the Pacific wilderness.

In The Browns of California, journalist and scholar Miriam Pawel weaves a narrative history that spans four generations, from August Schuckman, the Prussian immigrant who crossed the Plains in 1852 and settled on a northern California ranch, to his great-grandson Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the family homestead 140 years later. Through the prism of their lives, we gain an essential understanding of California and an appreciation of its importance.

The coming of age of a late bloomer and quiet dreamer set in a small beach town community of southern California during the early 1960s. Twenty-two-year-old Lorraine is finding it tough-going when she moves to Hollywood. Her Associate of Art’s degree from the local junior college does not help her get a job in the art field. And if that isn’t enough, her longtime boyfriend has broken up with her. The job she does have as a receptionist is also a disaster, so when she comes down with severe laryngitis, she is ready to call it quits.

This rapidly aging bird flew the coop - via TWA! I left my tear-soaked, empty nest in the California dust, and joyously migrated to Paris, France! I took to the air with two bulging K-Mart wide-belly suitcases; one seriously emaciated bank account; an excess of self-confidence; and last, but not least, my little "hotdog" and main squeeze...Sport Dachshund!

Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero. Kendra's family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price.

One day during his ninth-grade speech class, Kelly Daniels's outlaw, soul-surfer father appears at school unannounced and pulls the boy from class. Speeding down the freeway, Daniels's father admits that he has been involved in a crime, but he does not remember how it happened. He'd been up for days on cocaine and booze, he explains, and the next thing he knew he woke up in jail with a bad feeling.

Educated in Amherst, Massachusetts, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe (1819-1906) accompanied her physician-husband to California in 1849. The Shirley Letters (1922) is the book edition of a series of letters written by Mrs. Clappe to her sister in 1851 and 1852. They were first published under the pseudonym of Dame Shirley in the Pioneer magazine, 1854-55. In these letters, Louise Clappe writes of life in San Francisco and the Feather River mining communities of Rich Bar and Indian Bar.

In 2006, Matthew Specktor moved into a crumbling Los Angeles apartment opposite the one in which F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the last moments of his life. Fitz had been Specktor's first literary idol, someone whose own passage through Hollywood had, allegedly, broken him. Freshly divorced, professionally flailing, and reeling from his mother's cancer diagnosis, Specktor was feeling unmoored. But rather than giving in or "cracking up", he embarked on an obsessive journey to make sense of the mythologies of "success" and "failure" that haunt the artist's life and the American imagination.

For over a decade, I’ve been captivated by the idea of this book, which goes beyond profiling well-known locals in Orange County. It focuses on individuals who contribute significantly to the region’s culture and beyond, showcasing a diverse range of stories. Orange County isn’t just a location; it’s a hub of creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation—from surf culture to tech giants.

Yasith Chhun was just a 42-year-old accountant living a comfortable life in California. Then he tried to overthrow the Cambodian government from his humble office in Long Beach. Inspired by films like Braveheart, Chhun planned "Operation Volcano," a scheme replete with espionage, jungle guerrillas, and East German rocket launchers. Could Chhun's quixotic, incredibly risky and potentially bloody coup possibly succeed?

While the journey was long and brutal, Lavinia found time to keep a daily journal of the entire adventure. Later in life, upon the urging of her children and grandchildren, she wrote this book to share her overland journey in great detail with anyone who wanted to learn what it was like for those old pioneers. They risked everything for a new land and a new start, and many died on the way, but for many who made it, the risk was well worth the reward.