These are among the new titles with local themes or released by local writers, listed in alphabetical order by author names:
“Everything Is Photograph: A Life of André Kertész” by Patricia Albers
Other Press, 560 pages, $49.99, Jan. 27, 2026
Mountain View writer and art historian Patricia Albers presents a complete biography of photographer André Kertész, examining his journey from Budapest to Paris to America. Also the author of “Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter: A Life” and “Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti,” she has made numerous contributions to art journals, newspapers and museum catalogs. In her new title, the seasoned researcher and curator describes the significance of Kertész, who took more than 100,000 images during his lifetime and is considered the first major photographer to utilize the Leica camera. Born in Budapest in 1894, Kertész attained fame in Jazz Age Paris before later facing poverty and ruin in New York. He shot photos for House & Garden for 14 years before reemerging in 1964 with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Booklist calls Albers a “superlative arts biographer” who is the “first to fully bring to light virtuoso Hungarian photographer André Kertész’s complicated story, poetic sensibility and contradictory temperament.”
“Stillness and Survival: A Life Between Trauma, Glitter, and the Echo of My Own Voice” by Jacob Anthony Rose
JPride Entertainment, 236 pages, $15.99, Jan. 6, 2026
Born and raised in Martinez, Jacob Anthony Rose is the alter ego of drag artist Sheena Rose, a staple of San Francisco queer nightlife who emerged in 2006. “Part glam goddess, part club kid, and all heart,” Sheena appeared in venues like Aunt Charlie’s Lounge with the Hot Boxxx Girls and Dream Queens Revue, and 2012, recorded dance-floor anthems “Make Me Over,” “Queen of Clubs,” “Two of Hearts” and “The Night I Fly.” In the new memoir, Rose not only describes how he overcame his silence and being a hidden gay child by creating a glittering persona, but also how he once again found his voice and sanity following difficult years during the pandemic. He calls “Stillness and Survival” not “just a memoir,” but “a reclaiming.”
“A Story for Everything: Mastering Diverse Storytelling for Any Occasion” by Corey Rosen
TMA Press, 368 pages, $19.99, Dec. 2, 2025
San Francisco writer, actor, visual effects producer and instructor Corey Rosen says his work “lives at the crossroads of storytelling, performance and teaching.” The host of The Moth StorySlams and GrandSlams has been featured on The Moth Radio Hour, the Sarah and Vinnie Show on Alice radio and KFOG’s The Finch Files Podcast. A leader of workshops at businesses from theaters and schools to Fortune 500 companies and tech startups, Rosen’s mission is to help people turn their experiences into stories that move others. He follows up his 2021 book “Your Story, Well Told” with the new “A Story for Everything: Mastering Diverse Storytelling for Any Occasion,” a guide for folks seeking success in business, sales, job interviews, teaching at all levels, or who simply want to deliver a captivating eulogy, toast or speech. For him, “storytelling isn’t just an art form — it’s a tool for connection, creativity, and understanding.”
“Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal with 80 Prompts from Beloved Authors to Improve Your Style” by Nina Schuyler
Sibylline Press, 214 pages, $18, Jan. 16, 2026
“How to Write Stunning Sentences: 100 Simple Exercises from Beloved Authors to Improve Your Writing Style,” second edition, by Nina Schuyler
Sibylline Press, 266 pages, $19, Jan. 13, 2026
Bay Area writer Nina Schuyler gifts readers and aspiring writers with two volumes to make their New Year’s writing resolutions come true. In addition to her writing manuals, Schuyler explores environmental themes in other recent work. Her short story collection “In This Ravishing World” won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Her novel “Afterword” won the Foreword INDIE Book of the Year Award for Literary and Science Fiction. Schuyler, a longtime teacher of creative writing at Stanford Continuing Studies and Book Passage, believes that “sentences are alive…. done well, they can help us see the world anew.” In her newest book, she advises focusing on fresh rhythms and imagery and offers 80 inspirational prompts from acclaimed writers including Lauren Graff, Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf.
“The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans” by Maya Shankar
Riverhead Books, 256 pages, $30, Jan. 13, 2026
Bay Area cognitive scientist Maya Shankar, a former Rhodes Scholar and senior policy advisor in Barack Obama’s administration, created the award-winning podcast “A Slight Change of Plans.” In her new book, she explores how people can find meaning in times of change, whether confronting the end of a relationship, illness, job loss, or any confusing life-changing moment. Shankar illuminates stories of people who have undergone life’s disruptions to share what can be drawn from their experiences. She believes change can lead people to new perspectives and opportunities, helping unlock human potential. Brené Brown, bestselling author of “Atlas of the Heart” and” Daring Greatly,” calls “‘The Other Side of Change’ a “rare combination of beautiful storytelling, cognitive science and wholehearted wisdom.”
“The Reckoning” by Kelli Stanley
Severn House, 336 pages, $39.99, Jan. 6, 2026
San Francisco writer Kelli Stanley is known for her award-winning San Francisco-set 1940s noir series (“City of Dragons,” “City of Secrets,” “City of Ghosts,” and “City of Sharks”) featuring private investigator Miranda Corbie, described by Library Journal as “one of crime’s most arresting heroines.” In her new book, she turns her attention to 1980s Southern Humboldt County in the first of a series introducing Renata Drake, an attorney who hopes to disappear following the murder of her sister. The book explores the Emerald Triangle part of town, where cannabis is a major product and a serial killer is on the loose. Could Renata be the one to find the murderer in the tale of corruption? In addition to fiction writing, Stanley founded the nonprofit publisher Nasty Woman Press. Stanley, winner a certificate of honor for literary achievement from the city and county of San Francisco, is currently at work on another Miranda Corbie adventure.
“Tell Me I Belong: A Journey Across Faiths and Generations” by David Weill
Union Square & Co., 288 pages, $21, Dec. 9, 2025
David Weill, a New Orleans resident, former director of the Center for Advanced Lung Diseases and the Lung and Heart-Lung Transplant Program at Stanford University Medical Center, sits on the board of SFJazz and works as an advisor to transplant programs nationwide. In his writing, he explores the human side of medicine, ethics and personal transformation. His new memoir covers how, growing up in New Orleans as the son of a famous Jewish pulmonologist and a Southern Baptist mother, he never fit in with his Christian or Jewish friends. He describes his journey of self-discovery, including converting to Catholicism, then embarking on an intense search for his Jewish roots, including finding his grandfather’s records of time imprisoned in a concentration camp and a heart-wrenching trip to Berlin to find his father’s first home. He says, “I went searching, for the truths my family carried in silence.”