Before tech took over San Francisco, before cellphones but after the terrible reign of AIDS, there were the gleeful revels of the ’90s. Tradowsky’s ornate novel is a love letter to a foggy, analog metropolis lit up with nightlife and art, queer friendship and desire, movie houses and day jobs, and 20-somethings aching to define […]
Invoking Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, O’Neill-Butler explores the subversive, surprising, and often brilliant tactics of artists fighting for social change. Ten case studies spanning five decades illustrate the original ways artists have demonstrated against unjust practices, “from protesting to philanthropy, and from wheat pasting to planting a field of wheat.” O’Neill-Butler, a former […]
Big is a dream who towers over all the other dreams in his town. In this story, they all have only two goals: to find their matching person and to help them realize their dream; when they’re successful, the dreams turn blue. As other, smaller dreams match up with their people, Big finds himself left […]
Fourteen-year-old Goff, having faced off against a dark wizard, is ready to enjoy his days at a boarding school. Elsewhere, his “magical friends from past adventures,” Bones and Maxim, find and inadvertently activate a Time Lock. Around the campus, Goff, his romantic interest, and his best friends all vanish with a “pop.” The story then […]
The candle burns over the next 24 hours while everyone shares stories about Grandpa, creating new memories as each reminiscence connects to an activity he used to enjoy. As the family members use a telescope to gaze at the night sky, the nameless young protagonist recalls Grandpa explaining how to find the constellation Orion; sitting […]
Split into three sections, the memoir opens in 1964 when Lucas, 14, learns that her family is suddenly moving to Australia. It was, as Lucas shows, one of a handful of moves brought on by her father’s gambling problem, which eventually divided the family when Lucas and her mother refused to move anywhere else with […]
Her work as a consultant to the local police, along with what she earns selling custom-made dollhouses, has helped widowed Maple Bishop stabilize her financial situation. But it’s clear that the miniature crime scene recreations that she makes for Elderberry Sheriff Sam Scott are a source not only of income but of professional pride and […]
Encompassing works published from 1975 to 2013, this collection by Murguía reflects a flinty but compassionate sensibility, focused on people struggling on society’s lower rungs, especially in the Bay Area. The title story exemplifies the approach, narrated by a San Francisco building inspector investigating a fatal Mission District fire; the story encompasses the narrator’s personal […]
Opening and closing with scenes from a gig as a 33-year-old burlesque dancer, Campbell shows off her experience as a stand-up comic with a quip-laden narrative in which she chronicles both her youth as a picky eater from childhood through college and a yearslong, riotously contentious, on-again, off-again relationship with a sometimes pushy, sometimes disturbingly […]
In no geographical order, Zommer presents 13 islands or island groups from our planet’s estimated 600,000. For each, the author includes blocks of chatty commentary scattered around a stylized aerial view decorated with outsize flora, fauna, and volcanos or other geophysical highlights. Signs of human presence in these diverse locales are largely confined to glimpses […]