These are among the new titles with local themes or released by local writers, listed in alphabetical order by author names:
“Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia” by Brian Barth
Astra House, 304 pages, $29 hardcover, Nov. 11, 2025
Award-winning Bay Area journalist Brian Barth takes readers on in-depth journey through Silicon Valley’s surprising homeless encampments, unveiling people living in tents, cars and shacks beside luminous skyscrapers and tech campuses. Barth combines memoir, investigative reporting and cultural criticism to bring to life the story of residents in three camps—Wood Street in Oakland, Crash Zone in San Jose and Wolfe Camp in Cupertino. He introduces people, who, though at risk of enduring violent sweeps, consider these areas as sites of refuge; at the same time, he illustrates the cruelty and ineffectiveness of the country’s approach to homelessness. Barth has written for the New Yorker, National Geographic, Washington Post, The New Republic and Mother Jones. “Front Street” is his debut book; he is currently in production on “The Spark,” a film about an urban tribe’s struggles. He and his wife Samira Kiani are developing a spiritual sanctuary in California’s Lost Coast region.
“The Body Digital: A Brief History of Humans and Machines from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT” by Vanessa Chang
Melville House, 256 pages, $19.99 paperback, Nov. 4, 2025
This first book by San Francisco writer and scholar Vanessa Chang reimagines the human body through the technology that each part inspires: voice, hand, ear, foot. The volume describes how bodies and technologies come together to affect how we see, move and picture the future—and how technology supports humans in their creative endeavors. Chang, who holds a doctorate from Stanford University in Modern Thought and Literature, and is the director of programs at Leonardo, a nonprofit think tank addressing intersections between art, sciences and technology, uncovers hidden histories. “This book grows from my deep fascination with the human body in all its elasticity, creativity and diversity,” Chang says. “To me, how our fingers skip and tap across our smartphones is as marvelous as how they dance across piano keys. And tap they do: the average user touches their phone more than 2,600 times a day.” Chang’s approachable yet literary style leads the reader through the history of the connection between bodies and technology— and into the future.
“In the Shadow of the Bridge: Birds of the Bay Area” by Dick Evans and Hannah Hindley
Heyday, 240 pages, $50 hardcover, Nov. 25, 2025
Veteran photographer Dick Evans, who created the books “San Francisco and the Bay Area: The Haight Ashbury Edition,” “The Mission,” and “San Francisco’s Chinatown,” takes readers behind the scenes in a bird’s life in the greater Bay Area, whether exploring a marsh that’s home to endangered birds near Oakland Airport, the quarter-million seabirds of the Farallon Islands or the flocks of egrets on Crissy Field. The images are accompanied by environmental essayist and Berkeley resident Hannah Hindley’s text, which explores notions of independence and ecology facing these awe-inspiring avians living in an urban landscape. “From the mundane to the extraordinary, every scene in this book tells a story of wild beauty, patience and discovery,” says John P. Dumbacher, curator of Ornithology and Mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences.
“Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult” by Ellen Huet
MCD, 432 pages, $30 hardcover, Nov. 18, 2025
Investigative journalist Ellen Huet, who covers technology and Silicon Valley for Bloomberg News, offers a cautionary take on tech’s darker side in “Empire of Orgasm,” a frank exploration of companies that have taken things too far. In the height of the late-2000s wellness boom, One Taste and its founder Nicole Daedone promoted orgasmic meditation (known as OM), gathering millions in sales in what some called a manipulative cult, which was later shut down by the FBI. At one point, Huet says, OM was as popular as yoga, yet it abused its members and led many to their downfall. Based on her article for Bloomberg that exposed the coercive cult, Huet’s investigative journey takes an unblinking eye to Daedone’s bad deeds, which ended in her being convicted in 2025. Helena Aeberli in the Los Angeles Review of Books says Huet’s book is “full of shocking revelations about a company that promised empowerment but provided only exploitation.”
“The Strength of Water: An Asian American Coming of Age Memoir” by Karin K. Jensen
Sibylline Press, 360 pages, $21 paperback, Nov. 7, 2025
Alameda Post writer Karin K. Jensen’s debut, “The Strength of Water: An Asian American Coming of Age Memoir,” imagines her mother’s transpacific quest for identity, survival and new world dreams—as she journeyed from the United States to China and back again. King Ying lives behind her parent’s laundry business in 1920s Detroit, struggling with taunting and her father’s old-fashioned values. As her father’s business falters, he sends her to his native land, remote Tai Ting Pong in the Guandong Province of China, where she feels equally out of place. Ying faces hunger, superstitions and the Japanese invasion at the beginning of the Sino Japanese War. In this unique memoir detailing strength, courage and family betrayal, Jensen lovingly portrays her mother’s courage. Kirkus Reviews put it on its list of top 100 indie books, calling it “a classic, vividly written immigrant saga.”
“Self Portraits Ex Machina” by Devi Laskar
Finishing LinePress, $22.99 paperback, Nov. 21, 2025
Bay Area novelist Devi Laskar invites readers on a literary adventure with “Self-Portraits Ex Machina,” her first poetry collection in which she examines human resilience and ingenuity. Laskar, author of the novels “The Atlas of Reds and Blues” and “Circa,” addresses motherhood, marriage and food, and deeper issues of trauma, triumph and racism in the new volume. In “Restaurant Queue Contrapuntal,” for example, Laskar reimagines prejudice at a hostess stand, where power and its opposite go to battle. Her other topics range from vacation camps to the hazards of intergenerational recipe translation to retelling ancient myths and country music. She even includes Mad Libs-type interactive poetry, creating a montage of cultural and personal viewpoints. Elizabeth Rosner, author of “Third Ear” and “Survivor Cafe,” says “Laskar fuses memory with rage, turning hunger into vengeance, carving form into beauty as well as tragedy. These poems render personal history as haunting revelations of body, mind and spirit, carrying urgent messages that demand to be heard.”
“Whoa, Nelly!: A Love Story with Footnotes” by Julia Park Tracey
Sibylline Press, 238 pages, $18 paperback, Nov. 14. 2025
Longtime East Bay journalist and current Grass Valley resident Julia Park Tracey is the author of multiple books that bring to life women’s history. A lifelong fan of the “Little House” books, she crossed the American prairie by train to follow Laura Ingalls Wilder’s footsteps in “Whoa, Nelly!,”a story of romance and discovery. In the novel, Nelly, a librarian enamored with Laura, sets out to walk in her footsteps on the prairie. What she finds isn’t all beautiful lands and loving mothers, but rather history’s battle with racism and revisionist history, along with the forbidding character of Rose Wilder Lane, Laura’s daughter, who wrote the “Little House” books based on Laura’s journals. There’s also romance with the handsome and alluring Almanzo, along with a child in danger—everything Nelly needs to reclaim her own story.