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message 1: by Linda (new)

Linda Martin (lindajm) | 75 comments Mod
This thread is for California fiction recommendations!


message 2: by Linda (last edited Jun 09, 2021 04:07PM) (new)

Linda Martin (lindajm) | 75 comments Mod
I lived a long stretch of my life in the San Joaquin Valley. Here are two juvenile fiction recommendations set in that area.

Blue Willow
Esperanza Rising


message 3: by Linda (last edited Jun 10, 2021 12:47PM) (new)

Linda Martin (lindajm) | 75 comments Mod
This year's California Book Awards Finalists, for fiction. These awards are given to books "written while the author is a resident in California."

FICTION - 2021

Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu
Pantheon/Vintage

Members Only, by Sameer Pandya
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, by Daniel Mason
Little, Brown and Company

These Women, by Ivy Pochoda
Ecco

The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
Riverhead Books

FIRST FICTION - 2021

Fiebre Tropical, by Juli Delgado Lopera
Feminist Press - Setting: Florida.

Godshot, by Chelsea Bieker
Catapult - Setting: California

How Much of These Hills is Gold, by C Pam Zhang
Riverhead Books - Setting: California


The rest of these - I'm not sure if they're fiction or nonfiction - I haven't researched each one of them yet.

YOUNG ADULT - 2021

The Black Kids, by Christina Hammonds Reed
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Dragon Hoops, by Gene Luen Yang
First Second Books, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

Private Lessons, by Cynthia Salaysay
Candlewick Press

We Are Not Free, by Traci Chee
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

JUVENILE - 2021

Efrén Divided, by Ernesto Cisneros
Quill Tree Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Mañanaland, by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Scholastic Press

The Only Black Girls In Town, by Brandy Colbert
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Outside In, by Deborah Underwood and Cindy Derby
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt


message 4: by Linda (last edited Jun 24, 2021 10:04AM) (new)

Linda Martin (lindajm) | 75 comments Mod
It is time for Booktube Spin #3 (my video link).

Here's my California-themed list of books I'd like to read.

Fiction (3)
1. How Much of These Hills is Gold, by C Pam Zhang - 2020 - 288 pages
2. California Gold, by John Jakes - 2001 - 678 pages
3. There There, by Tommy Orange - 2018 - 304 pages

Memoirs (8)
4. On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family, by Lisa See - 1996 - 448 pages
5. My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir - 1911 - 160 pages
6. At Berkeley in the Sixties: The Making of an Activist, by Jo Freeman - 2003 - 384 pages
7. Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California, by Bruce Neuburger - 2013 - 350 pages
8. Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, A Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State, by Nick Neely - 2019 - 432 pages
9. Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm, by David Mas Masumoto - 1995 - 256 pages
10. Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor - 1991 - 576 pages
11. Swallow the Ocean, by Laura M. Flynn - 2008 - 304 pages

Native Americans (4)
12. To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman, by Lucy Thompson - 1991 - 292 pages
13. Karuk, the Upriver People, by Maureen Bell - 1991 - 144 pages
14. Ararapikva: Traditional Karuk Indian Literature from Northwestern California, by Julian Lang - 1993 - 112 pages
15. Ka'm-t'em: A Journey Toward Healing, by Kishan Lara-Cooper and Walter J. Lara Sr. - 2019 - 356 pages

General nonfiction (5)
16. The Library Book, by Susan Orlean - 2018 - 317 pages
17. Floodpath: The Deadliest Man-Made Disaster of 20th-Century America and the Making of Modern Los Angeles, by Jon Wilkman - 2016 - 336 pages
18. Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love, by David Talbot - 2012 - 480 pages
19. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, by Ben Tarnoff - 2015 - 336 pages
20. The Barbary Coast, by Herbert Asbury - 1933 - 318 pages


message 5: by Linda (new)

Linda Martin (lindajm) | 75 comments Mod
More California books / westerns... found at a webpage called Old West Novels. http://www.historicalnovels.info/Old-...

California, the Gold Rush and Western Mining Towns

Purchase from the Book Depository, Amazon or Powell's Books


Jack Adler, A Rage of Duty (2011), about a young California woman and an English agent who fall in love despite their conflicting loyalties in Monterey, California, on the eve of the U.S-Mexican War.

Isabel Allende, Daughter of Fortune (1999), a literary novel about a pregnant Chilean woman who follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush. Review at Bookreporter.com

Gwen Bristow, Jubilee Trail (1950), about a young woman from New York who marries an adventurous trader and travels to California with him in the years before the Gold Rush.

Gwen Bristow, Calico Palace (1970), about the men and women who migrated to California before the Gold Rush and were already there when it began.

Emma Donoghue, Frog Music (2014), about a burlesque dancer whose friend Jenny Bonnet is murdered during a heat wave and smallpox epidemic in 1876 San Francisco.

Judith Greber, Mendocino (1987), a family saga about a Russian immigrant and his Native American wife in California.

Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp (1870), a collection of short stories about the California Gold Rush; contemporary fiction at the time it was written.

Robin Lee Hatcher, Heart of Gold (2012), historical romance about a minister's daughter and a Wells Fargo driver who meet in Grand Coeur, Idaho, during the Civil War years; Christian message.


Cecelia Holland, Railroad Schemes (1997), about an orphaned girl and an outlaw determined to stop the railroad from coming to 1870s Los Angeles; #1 in the Railroad Schemes series.

Cecelia Holland, Lily Nevada (1999), about a strong-willed woman who makes a new life for herself in Gilded Age San Francisco; #2 in the Railroad Schemes series.

Cecelia Holland, The Bear Flag: A Novel of California (1990), about a young woman involved in California’s struggle for independence.

Cecelia Holland, Pacific Street (1991), about an escaped slave who gains influence in Gold Rush San Francisco.


James D. Houston, Bird of Another Heaven (2007), about a modern talk show host discovering his family roots in Gold Rush California and nineteenth century Hawaii.

John Jakes, California Gold (1989), about a real estate tycoon in California in the early 1900s.

Catherine Lanigan, Wings of Destiny (1999), a descendant of one of San Francisco's founders unearths the story of her grandfather's greed and corruption.

Louis L'Amour, The Californios (1974), about a family of Irish ranchers in Spanish California.

Kristen Lynch, Silver (2014), about a schoolteacher who also works as a news reporter in Silver City, Idaho, as tensions rise between two mining companies on the eve of the "Owyhee War."

Gary McCarthy, The Gringo Amigo (1991), about the violent times after the Gold Rush.

Ralph Milliken, California Dons (1967), about California during the mission days when it was part of Mexico.

Elizabeth Buechner Morris, Bitter Passage (2011), about an immigrant from Prussia who accompanies her husband to California in 1848, bringing their children, when he joins the rush for gold; self-published.

Sam Sackett, Sweet Betsy from Pike (2009), about a pregnant eighteen-year-old who travels to California during the Gold Rush with her lover, Ike; self-published.

Christina Schwarz, The Edge of the Earth (2013), about a woman who becomes a lighthouse keeper with her husband on California's Big Sur coast in 1898.

Robert J. Seidman, Moments Captured (2012), about the pioneering San Francisco photographer Edward Muybridge and his romance with the uninhibited dancer Holly Hughes.

Robert Lewis Taylor, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1959), a coming-of-age story about a Scottish boy's journey by wagon train to California during the 1849 Gold Rush.

Lawrence Thornton, Ghost Woman, about a Native American woman converted to Catholicism who settles in nineteenth century Santa Barbara.

Naida West, Eye of the Bear (2001), about California before the Gold Rush.


Richard S. Wheeler, Sierra (1996), about the California Gold Rush; 1996 Spur Award winner.

Richard S. Wheeler, The Richest Hill on Earth (2011), about the rivalry of the "copper kings" who amassed fortunes from copper mining in Butte, Montana, and the labor unrest it generated. Review

Richard S. Wheeler, Anything Goes (2015), about a vaudeville troupe performing in the remote mining towns of Montana and struggling to attract audiences until a mysterious young woman with a beautiful voice joins them.


Stewart E. White, Gold (1913), about four men who form a partnership during the Gold Rush; #1 in the California trilogy.

Stewart E. White, The Gray Dawn (1915), about four men who form a partnership during the Gold Rush; #2 in the California trilogy.

Stewart E. White, The Rose Dawn (1920), about four men who form a partnership during the Gold Rush; #3 in the California trilogy.


Frank Yerby, The Treasure of Pleasant Valley (1955), about a man who leaves his family's ruined plantation to join the California gold rush in 1849.

Frank Yerby, Devilseed (1984), about a San Francisco prostitute who becomes wealthy during the struggle between Mexicanos and Americans for control of California during the Gold Rush era.


Shirley Tallman, Murder on Nob Hill (2004), about a San Francisco woman who has long dreamed of becoming a lawyer and whose first case, in 1880, is a woman accused of murder whose innocence she may not be able to prove; #1 in the Sarah Woolson mystery series.

Shirley Tallman, The Russian Hill Murders (2005), about a woman lawyer in San Francisco who thinks a wealthy entrepreneur's wife did not die of natural causes; #2 in the Sarah Woolson mystery series.

Shirley Tallman, The Cliff House Strangler (2007), about a woman lawyer in San Francisco who encounters a dead body when she attends a seance; #3 in the Sarah Woolson mystery series.

Shirley Tallman, Scandal on Rincon Hill (2010), about a woman lawyer in San Francisco trying to solve a murder case with connections to high-end brothels, an Anglican church, and Darwin's theory of evolution; #4 in the Sarah Woolson mystery series.

Shirley Tallman, Death on Telegraph Hill (2012), about a woman lawyer whose search for the person who shot and wounded her brother leads to the discovery of a murder case; #5 in the Sarah Woolson mystery series.


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