These are among the new titles released by local writers, listed in alphabetical order by author names:
“Shot: A Dictionary of the Lost” by Jude Berman
She Writes Press, 256 pages, $17.99, July 15, 2025
Berkeley resident Jude Berman, a longtime freelance writer and editor, activist, painter and gardener, follows 2024’s “The Vow,” her feminist novel based on the 18th century Swiss painter Angelica Kauffman, with a unique, poignant and political collection. “Shot: A Dictionary of the Lost” offers 26 genre-bending short stories, arranged in alphabetical order, all putting a face on people of many ages and background across the U.S. who are victims of gunfire. For example, there’s Anna, who has a conflict with her mother about a school award; Ben, who late in life finds out he’s Jewish; Chester, who looks for his sister, who’s lost in a storm; and Dixie, who is pregnant with her second child. Kirkus Reviews said the book is “a potent and emotionally stirring depiction of how violence shapes everyday life”; a contributor to Goodreads calls it “socio-politically important” and “deeply moving.”
“The Glory of Giving Everything: The Taylor Swift Business Model” by Crystal Haryanto
Wiley, 240 pages, $25, July 16, 2025
San Francisco economic consultant Crystal Haryanto, a philanthropist and 2023 University of California, Berkeley graduate with degrees in economics, cognitive science and public policy, is perhaps not the most typical Swiftie. She takes on more than music in her new book “The Glory of Giving Everything: The Taylor Swift Business Model.” Haryanto, a two-time winner of the Cal Alumni Leadership Award, details how the pop superstar established a sustainable brand that resonates deeply with fans and offers insights on leveraging personal branding, fan engagement and innovative marketing. The book covers concepts covered in her news-making UC Berkeley course “Artistry, Policy, & Entrepreneurship: Taylor’s Version,” which got global media coverage and was broadcast on network TV. Haryanto, a world traveler, has taught ballet to Syrian refugees in Bulgaria and delivered bicycles to villagers in schools, health clinics and dairy farms in Zambia.
“Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersection of Species” by Bridget A. Lyons
Texas A&M University Press, 224 pages, $22, July 18, 2025
Santa Cruz writer-editor Bridget A. Lyons, a Harvard University graduate with a master’s of fine arts degree from Northern Arizona University–who also has been a wilderness guide, yoga instructor, middle-school teacher, energy bar maker and graphic designer–is a nature lover who contemplates the intrinsic value of all living creatures and the complex relationships between humans and non-humans. Her new book, “Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersection of Species” is a collection of 14 stories and essays addressing the query: “What can our 8.7 million ‘more-than-human’ neighbors teach us about life?” Individual investigations include: What can octopuses’ nine brains teach us about climate resilience? How can great horned owls’ keen hearing illuminate relationship dynamics? Does playing with kelp cultivate respect for the value of living things? Carl Safina, author of “Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe,” called “Entwined” a “lovely book, so full of empathy and longing … part travelogue, part memoir, and mostly about a natural world that deserves more respect…”
“The Girls Who Grew Big” by Leila Mottley
Knopf, 352 pages, $28, June 24, 2025
Oakland writer and poet Leila Mottley, well-known for 2022’s “Nightcrawling,” a novel about a 17-year-old Black girl who turns to sex work to support herself, then becomes a key witness in a police department sex scandal trial, describes the lives of young Black women who are pregnant in her novel “The Girls Who Got Big.” She says of its characters: “I wanted to show a vast array of different young mothers. They’re not monolithic. They have very different lives, different circumstances; each of these girls have different desires and pathways in parenthood. I wanted to remind us of the fact that these are just young women learning how to be adults—to live and survive and have fun, fall in love, and have friendships that are complicated.” Deesha Philyaw, author of “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” said, “‘The Girls Who Grew Big’ is a novel about teen pregnancy that brilliantly upends every reductive trope and platitude on the subject. With impeccable and breathtaking prose, Mottley takes us into the treacherous terrain where girlhood and womanhood collide, and where families and friendships fracture, and the lines between them blur.”
“A Real Emergency: Stories from the Ambulance” by Joanna Sokol
Strange Light, 464 pages, $18, June 3, 2025
Santa Cruz resident Joanna Sokol, who was born and raised in Oakland, details her years working in medicine on the street (in Reno, San Francisco and Santa Cruz) in “A Real Emergency: Stories from the Ambulance.” The book’s essays, which comment on the state modern health care, are drawn from notes she scribbled while on the job, her personal journals, her research into the industry, and the reflections of her fellow paramedics, with whom she enjoyed great camaraderie. Among her points is the paradox of 911: While 95 percent of calls are not life-or-death emergencies, responders do show up when people make that three-number call. Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author, said of “A Real Emergency”: “After a decade on the frontlines of a very broken system, Joanna Sokol has let loose one hell of a memoir: compelling, shocking, funny, galling, urgent and beautiful. The best I’ve read in quite some time.”
“The Other Wife” by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
Riverhead Books, 304 pages, $29, July 15, 2025
Award-winning Berkeley short story writer Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University from 2014-16 with a master of fine arts degree in fiction from Columbia University, tells the story of a nearly 40-year-old biracial woman examining her life’s choices in her debut novel “The Other Wife.” When Zuzu returns to her hometown after a sudden loss, she ponders her decision to pursue law over art; to marry Agnes even though she had complex feelings for her college friend Cash, and staying close to her white mother rather than her Black father when her parents divorced when she was a youngster. In an online interview, Thomas-Kennedy says of her theme: “I think the novel is less interested in regret than it is in a kind of greed—the desire for more variations on life’s major choices, more chances to make those choices, more chances to be young—than can ever really be available.” Oprah Daily said about “The Other Wife”: “Complex and enduring…We would follow Zuzu anywhere.”
“The Satisfaction Café: A Novel” by Kathy Wang
Scribner, 352 pages, $28.99, July 1, 2025
Bay Area novelist Kathy Wang, author of 2018’s popular “Family Trust and 2021’s “Impostor Syndrome,” takes on complexities of how to live life to its fullest in 2025’s “The Satisfaction Cafe.” It’s about Joan, a Taiwanese woman who comes to the U.S. to go to graduate school at Stanford University, and, after a brief first marriage, weds Bill, a wealthy, older white man, and becomes mother to his children. Ultimately, she turns to business, opening a café where conversation and connection are encouraged. The Washington Post review said: “Winsome … Sharp … The plot of ‘The Satisfaction Café’ is relatively muted as it leaps through the decades of Joan’s life. In any case, the real attraction of this novel isn’t its plot but its voice. Ironic but rarely biting, Wang’s narration moves nimbly just above Joan’s perplexed perspective while catching the notes of absurdity and hypocrisy around her.”
The post Bay City Books: New books from Bay Area authors — June, July 2025 appeared first on Local News Matters.