Bay City Books: New Books from Bay Area authors – October 2024

Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie

By Steve Wasserman (Berkeley)
Heyday Books, Oct. 8, 2024

Steve Wasserman, the publisher of Heyday Books and a former literary agent, publisher, Los Angeles Times Book Review editor, and passionate activist in Berkeley in the late 1960s and 1970s, shares his observations about the world in this memoir-in- essays originally published in the Nation, the American Conservative, the New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Wasserman knew many celebrated figures and writes about his relationships with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Susan Sontag, Christopher Hitchens, Gore Vidal, and Daniel Ellsberg. He delves into pressing societal issues, such as newspapers’ decline and printed books’ fate.

House of Grace, House of Blood

By Denise Low (Healdsburg)
University of Arizona Press, Oct. 8, 2024 

Denise Low, the former poet laureate of Kansas and a board member of Indigenous Nations Poets, wrote a memoir in 2017 about her family’s hidden connection to the Delaware (Lenape), an Indigenous tribe that dispersed after they sold the island of Manhattan to the Dutch. In poems that intertwine a lyrical voice with historical texts, Low writes in House of Grace, House of Blood about a little-known massacre of 96 Lenapes by a renegade Pennsylvania militia in 1782. She explores through poetry the lingering impact of the Gnadenhutten Massacre in Ohio and how the Delaware have overcome that trauma to thrive today.

The Current Fantasy

By Charlie Haas (Oakland)
Beck and Branch Literary Studio, Oct. 15, 2024

Charlie Haas, a screenwriter whose novels are infused with humor, sets his latest in pre-World War I Germany and California. In 1914, a group of countercultural bohemians form a commune in the German woods, only to flee to San Bernardino County when war breaks out. The Lanze family moves from Berlin to sunny California to live at Sunland, as the commune is named. The commune members enjoy a brief moment of glory before violence implodes the place. But the commune members’ vision of a better world never fades. 

Silence 

By Julia Park Tracey (Grass Valley)
Sibylline Press, Oct. 15, 2024

Julia Park Tracey, the former poet laureate of Alameda and the co-founder of Sibylline Press, which publishes work by women over 50, has penned her second historical novel based on the lives of her female relatives. Silence Marsh, a Puritan who lives in western Massachusetts in 1722, is ordered to stay silent for a year after she speaks out in anger at a town meeting about the deaths of three people she is close to. The novel follows Silence as she remains silent, yet grows closer to Daniel Greenleaf, a doctor who recently graduated from Harvard Medical School. Kirkus Reviews called Tracey “a remarkable writer” and said Silence is “a historically astute and compelling must-read.”

The Theatrical Adventures of Edward Gorey: Rare Drawings, Scripts, and Stories

By Carol Verberg (San Francisco)
Chronicle Books, Oct. 15, 2024

Carol Verberg was a friend, neighbor and collaborator of Edward Gorey, the book cover illustrator, writer and artist well known for his unsettling drawings that evoke the Victorian era. (Think of the animated introduction to the PBS Mystery! series). Gorey was also a theater lover, who, after winning a Tony Award in 1977 for the costumes he designed for Dracula, turned to a smaller scale. In the last decade of Gorey’s life, he and Verber co-produced 20 original plays or “entertainments” in Cape Code. This art book with a velvet spine details Gorey’s love for the theater with 200 illustrations, annotated scripts, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and Verber’s memories of the man she considered a friend.

Louder Than the Lies: Asian American Identity, Solidarity, and Self-Love

By Ellie Yang Camp (San Francisco)
Heyday Books, Oct. 22, 2024

Ellie Yang Camp, a second-generation Taiwanese American educator, ponders what it means to be Asian American in the United States. In Louder Than the Lies, which draws on interviews and her own experiences, Camp establishes a framework to dispel white supremacist stereotypes affecting people of Asian descent. In three sections, The System, Living in the System, and Dismantling the System, she dissects the model minority myth, yellowface, and anti-Blackness among Asian communities. She challenges tropes and asks Asian American readers to embrace self-determination as an act of radical liberation.

Stella & Marigold

By Annie Barrows (Berkeley) and Sophie Blackall (Brooklyn)
Chronicle Books, Oct. 1, 2024

From the author and illustrator of the popular children’s picture book series Ivy & Bean comes a new series about a pair of sisters. Stella, 7, wants to teach her sister Marigold, 4, everything she knows. They share secrets, such as one involving a blanket, another about wolves and a storm. And then there is one more exciting secret that only Stella and Marigold know.

Calling All Future Voters!

By Laura Atkins (Berkeley), Edward Hailes Jr., Jennifer Lai-Peterson
Illustrated by Srimalie Bassani
Gloo Books, Oct. 1, 2024

It’s election season, and the kids of the E-Squad afterschool troop want to encourage people to vote. So they survey their neighbors and realize that many are still fighting for the right to vote. Atkins, who co-wrote the award-winning Fred Korematsu Speaks Up and Biddy Mason Speaks Up and her fellow author and illustrator have created a 32-page book that explores the history of voting rights and highlights our country’s ongoing struggle for a more inclusive democracy. 

Nocturnal Nico: A Bedtime Picture Book for Night Owls

By Gabe Jenson (Berkeley)
Familius, Oct. 15, 2024

Nico doesn’t want to sleep. He tries to convince his family he is similar to the creatures who come out at night, such as owls and bats. Like them, he doesn’t fear the dark – or does he? Will he be able to stay up all night? 

Toypurina: Japchivit Leader, Medicine Woman, Tongva Rebel

By Cheyenne M. Stone and Glenda Armand
Illustrated by Katie Dorame (Oakland)
Little Bee Books, Oct. 1, 2024

Katie Dorame, a Tongva artist, draws the pictures in this book about a little-known rebellion. In 1785, Spanish Franciscan fathers in California forced Native Americans into missions, renaming them and forbidding them to speak their native languages. Toypurina, a medicine woman for the Tongva tribe, learned about the harsh conditions and led a revolt in the San Gabriel mission in southern California. 

Golden Gate: Building the Mighty Bridge

By Elizabeth Partridge (Berkeley)
Chronicle Books, Oct. 8, 2024

The Golden Gate Bridge is a beloved landmark known around the world. But building it was hard. Workers had to erect the steel towers in a treacherous strait where deep ocean waters ripped back and forth with the tides. National Book Award finalist and Sibert Medal winner Elizabeth Partridge describes the bridge’s construction in the 1930s through the eyes of the lighthouse keeper’s kids who watch as the orange towers rise. The book describes the astonishing engineering and human ingenuity it took to make the impossible possible.