Fall often heralds an abundance of new books to readers’ shelves, but this year brings an especially strong crop. “Many of our Bay Area heavy hitters seem to be in the nonfiction categories this fall,” said Luisa Smith, buying director at Book Passage, which has locations in San Francisco and Corte Madera.
With so many notable books to choose from this season, these picks include a bevy of titles by authors with Bay Area ties or set in the region, plus others that illuminate readers’ understandings of technology, culture, history and family.
Where There Was Fire
By John Manuel Arias (Flatiron Books, out Tuesday, Aug. 29)
One of the most anticipated debuts of the season — moved up from its original publication date in September — this novel showcases its author’s lyrical gifts and deep, personal knowledge of Costa Rican history and agribusiness. In scintillating prose, John Manuel Arias, who is also a poet, tells the story of a family rent apart by the ruthless banana industry and a deadly fire that impacts multiple generations.
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma
By Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar (Crown, out Tuesday, Sept. 5)
Palo Alto-based artificial intelligence entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman teams up with writer Michael Bhaskar to explain the risks and promises tied up in a fast-approaching technological revolution. Focused on AI and synthetic biology, a field of biotechnology that entails genetically engineering organisms, the authors make a case for why readers need to understand these increasingly relevant fields.
Creep: Accusations and Confessions
By Myriam Gurba (Avid Reader Press, out Tuesday, Sept. 5)
Blending memoir and cultural criticism, this essay collection allows the brilliant mind of Myriam Gurba to unfurl as she explores the many meanings of the word “creep.” Gurba, a UC Berkeley alum whom readers might recognize from her viral, witty takedown of the 2020 novel “American Dirt,” skewers subjects ranging from the wife-killing writer William Burroughs to the creeping sprawl of the Los Angeles suburbs where she now lives.
Blackward
By Lawrence Lindell (Drawn & Quarterly, Sept. 26)
Bay Area cartoonist Lawrence Lindell titles this charming graphic novel with a portmanteau of “Black” and “awkward.” It’s a perfect descriptor for his four heroes — Lika, Amor, Lala and Tony — a group of queer, creative BFFs who carve out a vibrant artistic space of their own and cultivate kinship despite the haters they encounter along the way.
People Collide
By Isle McElroy (HarperVia, Sept. 26)
Following their highly praised debut “The Atmospherians,” Isle McElroy brings readers a hilarious, riveting novel of a married American couple’s body swap. Eli, who has followed his more competent wife, Elizabeth, to Bulgaria, finds himself inexplicably trapped in her body. Meanwhile, the real Elizabeth has disappeared, setting Eli on a search for his spouse that challenges his understanding of gender.
This Is Salvaged
By Vauhini Vara (W.W. Norton, Sept. 26)
Vauhini Vara is on a roll. A Stanford alum who reported on the tech industry from San Francisco for many years, she made her fiction debut last year with “The Immortal King Rao” and was recently named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She’s back with a short-story collection that probes the relationships between people, observing humanity in multiple stages of life with humor and keen awareness.
Monica
By Daniel Clowes (Fantagraphics, Oct. 3)
With his first book in seven years, Oakland cartoonist Daniel Clowes immediately sucks readers into the fantastically detailed, colorful pages that tell the life story of its title character. Through interconnected stories, Clowes, the author of “Ghost World,” “Patience” and more, captures one woman’s life through decades of personal and national upheaval.
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial
By Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press, Oct. 3)
Collage may be an apt word to describe this genre-bending memoir from Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur fellow Viet Thanh Nguyen. Weaving together forms that include exquisite prose, verse and photographs, this masterful memoir follows the author and his family from their home country of Vietnam as they resettle in San Jose, including explosive revelations about family, memory and loss.
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
By Safiya Sinclair (Simon & Schuster, Oct. 3)
In the Rastafari family that Safiya Sinclair grew up in, “Babylon” described the “sinister and violent forces born of western ideology, colonialism, and Christianity.” Home was Montego Bay, Jamaica, beyond the bounds of pristine tourist resorts and confined by her father’s rigid religious beliefs. In clear, vivid prose, the Whiting Award-winning poet renders her early years and eventual liberation, aided by her courageous mother and the life-changing power of literature.
In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life
By Amy Schneider (Avid Reader Press, Oct. 3)
Oakland-based “Jeopardy!” sensationAmy Schneidermade history with her 40-game winning streak and as the first openly trans contestant to qualify for the show’s Tournament of Champions. In this intimate, engaging memoir, Schneider delves into who she is beyond the TV cameras, describing her lifetime of intellectual pursuit, how she learned to embrace her whole self and more.
Fire in the Canyon
By Daniel Gumbiner (Astra House, Oct. 3)
Who understands climate change better than the people who work the land? Oakland author Daniel Gumbiner presents this question in startling narrative form with his second novel about a Northern California farming family whose lives are disrupted by an encroaching wildfire. It’s no wonder that fellow Bay Area author Dave Eggers calls Gumbiner “a sort of 21st century Steinbeck.”
What We Kept to Ourselves
By Nancy Jooyoun Kim (Atria, Oct. 10)
很少有作家详细工薪阶层移民lives with the nuance and complexity of Bay Area author Nancy Jooyoun Kim. On the heels of her debut, “The Last Story of Mina Lee,” a Reese’s Book Club pick, Kim turns her attention to a Korean American family still reeling from the disappearance of their mother years ago. The plot thickens when a stranger turns up dead in their yard one evening — with a letter addressed to their missing mother.
Family Meal
By Bryan Washington (Riverhead, Oct. 10)
Delicious, poignant food writing feels like Bryan Washington’s specialty, and it surfaces early on in the award-winning author’s latest novel. One bite of a heavenly chicken turnover in the first pages unleashes a complex mix of feelings in the protagonist, Cam, who finds himself back in his hometown of Houston after suffering an unthinkable loss back in Los Angeles.
Blackouts
由贾斯汀Torres (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct. 10)
A former Stegner fellow at Stanford, acclaimed author Justin Torres takes an experimental approach with his second novel. As its title suggests, this is a work concerned with redactions and histories kept concealed, all in service of creating a new queer archive. At its center are two men in conversation — one young, one dying — accompanied by pages filled with images and documents.
Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will
By Robert M. Sapolsky (Penguin Press, Oct. 17)
Few people understand the human brain as well as renowned neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. In his latest book, the Stanford professor and MacArthur fellow turns his attention to making the case for why humans lack free will — and explaining “the science of how we might best live once we accept that.”
Girlfriends
By Emily Zhou (Little Puss, Oct. 17)
Intimate and perceptive, Emily Zhou’s debut short-story collection comes to life in the details that fill early adulthood for a cast of memorable young queer and trans characters — escape-artist cats, house parties that are equal parts awkward and alluring, and dead-end jobs abided until real life begins.
我学到的一切ed, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant
By Curtis Chin (Little, Brown, Oct. 17)
Breaking new ground has been part of Curtis Chin’s entire life, as his distinctive new memoir attests. A “gay ABC” (American-born Chinese) and co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Chin also directed trailblazing documentaries on Asian Americans’ educational fervor and the memory of Vincent Chin (no relation), a Chinese American man who was killed in the author’s home city of Detroit. In his bright, snappy voice, Chin traces his pioneering nature back to the Chinese restaurant his parents ran in Detroit, hospitable to all in a starkly divided city.
Murder by Degrees: A Mystery
By Ritu Mukerji (Simon & Schuster, Oct. 17)
A practicing doctor based in Marin County, Ritu Mukerji makes her literary debut with a historical novel plotted deftly around a 19th century murder mystery. Drawing on her medical knowledge and her lifelong love of detective novels, Mukerji brings to life the tale of Dr. Lydia Weston, a pioneering doctor who finds herself assisting in a police investigation after a patient’s suspicious death.
Organ Meats
By K-Ming Chang (One World, Oct. 24)
Girlhood has a feral quality, and Bay Area author K-Ming Chang captures its glory in her trademark muscular prose, telling the story of two best friends who swear to become dogs together. As in her previous books, the novel “Bestiary” and the story collection “Gods of Want,” Chang conjures magic in her fiction, stretching the bounds of reality and blurring the lines between human girls and wild dogs.
The Night Parade: A Speculative Memoir
By Jami Nakamura Lin (Mariner, Oct. 24)
In an extraordinary exploration of life in all its stages, debut memoirist Jami Nakamura Lin turns to the monsters of Japanese and Taiwanese folklore to better understand her own mental illness, the death of her father and the birth of her child. Featuring illustrations of these fantastical beasts by the author’s sister Cori Nakamura Lin, this book is an “abundant feast for our living and our dead,” according to local author K-Ming Chang.
I Would Meet You Anywhere
By Susan Kiyo Ito (Ohio State University Press, Nov. 7)
Bay Area author Susan Kiyo Ito expands the field of adoptee literature with this wise, sensitive memoir that traces a history that is both her own and of the larger Japanese American community. Adopted by Nisei parents, the author knew little of her roots, only that she was born to a Japanese American mother and a white father. Unlike many narratives concerning adoption, the author meeting her birth mother is just the beginning of the story, rather than its conclusion.
The Liberators
By E.J. Koh (Tin House, Nov. 7)
The Bay Area looms large in lauded memoirist, poet and literary translator E.J. Koh’s fiction debut. With scenes set in San Jose, Milpitas and San Francisco — in addition to other American and South Korean cities — this is a novel about escaping political turmoil, grieving a lost homeland, love and war. As always, Koh’s singular grasp of language results in achingly beautiful writing.
门户:圣Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities
By John King (W.W. Norton, Nov. 7)
The Chronicle’s own urban design critic lends his extensive expertise to this fascinating, immersive history of San Francisco’s vital Ferry Building. Sensory details leap from the pages as John King traces the rise, fall and rebirth of this urban landmark and what it reveals about the Bay Area, its residents and how they have moved around the region since 1898.
Same Bed Different Dreams
By Ed Park (Random House, Nov. 7)
Somehow, novelist and literary editor Ed Park manages to seamlessly pack elements of techno-dystopia, real and imagined Korean history, and a dose of American pop culture into this sweeping novel. While this is a work of fiction, its handling of alternate histories and the influence of social media make it a shockingly relevant portal into our near future.
Alice Sadie Celine
By Sarah Blakley-Cartwright (Simon & Schuster, Nov. 28)
Bestselling young adult novelist Sarah Blakley-Cartwright makes her adult fiction debut with a twisty, Bay Area-set romance between an older woman, Celine, and her daughter’s best friend, Alice. Sadie, Celine’s daughter, is the third point of this unusual triangle in a story that spans both ends of California and multiple decades of three women’s lives.
Hannah Bae is a freelance writer.