These are among the new titles with local themes or released by local writers, listed in alphabetical order by author names:
“The Wrong One Died: Life and Death in America’s Collapsing ERs” by Dr. Barbara Bond
Johns Hopkins University Press, 312 pages, $32.95, Nov. 17, 2026
East Bay emergency medicine physician Barbara Bond provides an insider’s look into America’s troubled emergency rooms in “The Wrong One Died: Life and Death in America’s Collapsing ERs.” The doctor, who co-chairs a leadership group for Sutter Health’s 21 emergency departments and is affiliated with Sutter Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, shares details about crowded waiting rooms, insufficient staffing and medications and risks of catastrophic error in this real-life version of TV’s “The Pitt.” Bond says she wrote the book to “deliver unvarnished, unfiltered truth about how and why emergency departments function”; the title is taken from an incident she describes in which a hospital notified the wrong family that their child died. Brendan Reilly, author of “One Doctor: Close Calls, Cold Cases and the Mysteries of Medicine,” says “Bond’s gut-wrenching stories capture the triumph and tragedy of our nation’s ‘ultimate safety net,’ overwhelmed ERs that save lives while struggling, often in vain, to help so many others who’ve been abandoned by our health care system.” Bond began medical school after a long international career playing rugby; she was co-captain of the 1991 Rugby World Cup championship team and was on the 1994 and 1998 Rugby World Cup teams.
“Crossing the Rubicon: The Betrayal of American Democracy, 2000-2026” by Mark Danner
New York Review Books, 424 pages, $27.95, Nov. 10, 2026
Longtime political journalist Mark Danner, a former New Yorker staff writer as well as instructor at University of California, Berkeley and Bard College in New York, addresses the erosion of democratic institutions in “Crossing the Rubicon: The Betrayal of American Democracy, 2000-2026.” The collection of pertinent essays details the rise of rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. in recent decades, covering fascism, the war on terror, Abu Ghraib, Dick Cheney, the Iraq War, the Bush-Gore elections, as well as Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and his return to presidential power. Dave Eggers says, “There’s probably no one alive who understands political conflict and upheaval better than Mark Danner, and there is almost certainly no one who writes more eloquently about it.” Danner appears with Adam Hochschild, author of “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis” at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Nov. 4; with Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of “Strangers in Their Own Land” at Clio’s Books in Oakland on Nov. 8 and with KQED politics correspondent Guy Marzorati at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco on Nov. 12.
“Yosemite Falls: Reckoning With California History and the Gospel of John Muir” by Daniel Duane
North Point Press, 336 pages, $29, Nov. 17, 2026
San Francisco psychotherapist Daniel Duane is the author of titles including the novel “Looking for Mo”; the climbing memoir “Lighting Out: A Vision of California and the Mountains;” the surfing memoir “Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast” and the new “Yosemite Falls: Reckoning With California History and the Gospel of John Muir.” The unique book combines his reminiscences and feelings about growing up in a nature-loving family, his own climbing experiences, as well as a critical examination of the state’s history when it comes to nature and wilderness, which has been characterized by white supremacy, cultural theft and governmental overreach. Jimmy Chin, Oscar-winning director of “Free Solo,” calls the book “the great, big, sad, and funny update to the John-Muir-Jack-Kerouac-Cheryl-Strayed epic of California life outdoors” and “Duane’s masterpiece: serious as a heart-attack, full of love and rage and, like Dan himself, always ready to hug it out.” Duane reads at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Nov. 15 and appears with “Heart of Dryness” author James Workman at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park on Nov. 17.
“The Farther Shore: A Novel” by Seth Fleisher
Green City Books, 460 pages, $19.95, Oct. 20, 2026
Berkeley’s Seth Fleisher, an executive working in international development, sustainable finance and democracy initiatives, debuts with the novel “The Farther Shore.” It’s inspired by the true story of Eugène Marais, a pioneering and controversial South African naturalist, journalist and Afrikaans poet in the1890s who disappeared into a remote forest leaving his wife and son, Charles. In the book, 30 years later, Charles returns to Africa to find his father and stop a sinister plot that misuses his father’s theories to promote racist ideas. Jamie Ford, author of “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet,” calls the novel “astonishing… as intellectually daring as it is lushly immersive.” Fleisher, who has worked with the World Bank Group and other nongovernmental organizations in South Africa, India and many other countries, co-founded a U.S.-based democracy initiative to counter the rising tide of authoritarianism. He appears with journalist Anna Nordberg at Book Passage in San Francisco on Nov. 14.
“The Pearl Farmers” by Stacey Gordon
She Writes Press, 336 pages, $18.99, Nov. 3, 2026
Alameda’s Stacey Gordon, who grew up in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio and began a journalism career covering the cultured pearl and jewelry industries for a trade magazine, debuts with “The Pearl Farmers,” a decades-spanning (1981-2008) novel about estranged sisters who uncover family secrets while struggling to protect their freshwater pearl farm in rural Tennessee. The book details the sisters’ different perspectives about their personal responsibility and their place in family history as they fight to survive while the family business fails. Kirkus Reviews calls the book a “textured tale of renewed kinship and self-discovery.” Gordon, who works today in user experience design for the tech industry in Silicon Valley, says her first career inspired the book because she wanted to use knowledge that long “rattled around” in her head. She says, “It began to dawn on me that a pearl farm provided the perfect landscape for the layered family story I’d always wanted to tell.” Gordon speaks at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Nov. 7.
“Sunshine: An Exploration of Living When You Are Dying” by Dr. Bryant Lin
Crown Books, 288 pages, $29, Nov. 10, 2026
Primary care physician Bryant Lin, co-founder and director of the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education, treated patients with lung cancer for some 20 years before being diagnosed with the same disease despite never smoking. In his first book, “Sunshine: An Exploration of Living When You Are Dying,” Lin shares his experience with a terminal illness as both a doctor and a patient; it’s based on a course he developed and taught at Stanford University School of Medicine called “From Diagnosis to Dialogue: A Doctor’s Real-Time Battle With Cancer.” Daniel Mason, author of “North Woods,” calls the book powerful and moving, saying “I learned so much, not only about illness and caregiving, but finding resilience, joy and even humor in some of the hardest moments we all must face.” Lin appears author-educator Laurel Braitman at Kepler’s in Menlo Park on Nov. 10.
“The Flying Death: Poison, Plunder and the Quest for a Miracle Medicine in the Amazon” by Matt O’Hara
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 400 pages, $32, Nov. 10, 2026
University of California, Santa Cruz Latin American history professor Matt O’Hara, author of books on Mexico’s history and politics, turns to Ecuador in the late 1930s in “The Flying Death: Poison, Plunder and the Quest for a Miracle Medicine in the Amazon.” The book describes competition among two men trying to source and market blow-dart poison, or curare, a substance found in an Amazonian vine used by Indigenous people that causes slow, silent death. One seeker was Richard Gill, an American explorer who had multiple sclerosis, who wanted it to treat himself, but also to profit by introducing it pharmaceutical companies. Russian-born botanist Boris Krukoff was on the hunt as well. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit,” says “O’Hara offers a gripping, exciting and deeply researched adventure story about ambition, exploitation and the true cost of medical breakthroughs” in a tale that moves “from jungle rivers and poison masters to medical trials and corporate boardrooms.” O’Hara appears at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Nov. 9 and with UC Berkeley history professor Rebecca Herman at Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley on Nov. 12.
“Fault Line Boy: A Mother’s Reckoning With Epilepsy” by Jen Murphy Parker
She Writes Press, 232 pages, $18.99, Nov.17, 2026
Hillsborough writer Jen Murphy Parker, who turned her challenges as a mom of a child with a severe brain disorder into a passion, describes her experience in “Fault Line Boy: A Mother’s Reckoning With Epilepsy.” Partnering with Dr. Joseph Sullivan, her son’s neurologist, Parker raised more than $2 million to create a pediatric center for comprehensive epilepsy care at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. In the memoir, Parker shares how her life went from the regular chaos of being the mother of four to embarking on a crash course in pediatric neurology as her son Lew begins to have unrelenting seizures. Chelsea Hodson, author of “Tonight I’m Someone Else,” says, “Whether Jen is trying to understand her son’s seizures or trying to make sense of the lessons of her life, she writes with honesty, humor, and grace.” Parker, who runs the praised Substack “Painting the Golden Gate,” appears with memoirist Irena Smith, author of “Troika: Three Generations, Three Days, and a Very American Road Trip,” at Kepler’s in Menlo Park on Nov. 19.
“Dark Country: A Thriller” by Adam Plantinga
Grand Central Publishing, 336 pages, $30. Oct. 27, 2026
Adam Plantinga, a sergeant in the San Francisco Police Department, writes nonfiction and novels. His new release “Dark Country: A Thriller” is the third in a series featuring former Detroit cop Kurt Argento. Here, Argento, who disappeared after bloodshed in Fenton, Arizona, ends up in the small town of Barton, South Dakota working as a handyman under an assumed name. After he meets a 17-year-old Syrian refugee who’s inexplicably being targeted, the two go on the on the road west in attempts to evade the hunters. Best-selling thriller writer Lisa Gardner says, “Plantinga delivers on the most riveting action-hero since Jack Reacher.” Plantinga, who works in the SFPD’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit, wrote ”400 Things Cops Know,” deemed “the new Bible for crime writers” by the Wall Street Journal. His fiction debut, 2024’s “The Ascent,” a USA Today bestseller, was followed by 2025’s “Hard Town.”
“Let Me Be Your Ghost” by Amy Suto
Sutoscience, 434 pages, $22-$32, Nov. 18, 2026
Bestselling San Francisco author Any Suto, a ghostwriter of memoirs of tech industry founders and Olympic athletes, uses the job as the basis of her new Bay Area-set novel “Let Me Be Your Ghost.” The romantic thriller follows the adventures of Lola, a memoir ghostwriter who has long shared her clients’ confessions with the FBI, who finds herself at the center of a forbidden love triangle, espionage and intrigue when she falls for the magnetic, powerful young billionaire who hires her to write his story. Suto, who created and runs a popular Substack publication called “Make Writing Your Job,” appears at The Burning Ember bookstore in Santa Cruz on Nov. 28 and at the Love Potion Library in San Francisco on Dec. 15.
“Future Tense: Poems” by Kelly Grace Thomas
Alice James Books, 100 pages, $19.95, Oct. 13, 2026
Award-winning Benicia poet and teacher Kelly Grace Thomas, author of 2020’s “Boat Burned,” returns with “Future Tense,” a memoir in verse of poems (tercets, fragments and more) that emphasize loss and desire. Poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib, author of “There’s Always This Year,” calls “Future Tense” a “thoughtful, beautiful meditation on the slow, aching and sometimes miraculous state of intertwined grief—in a manner that is not only about sadness, but also, through its rich imagery and world-building, asks a reader to consider what they love, what they have, perhaps, taken for granted, and how to adjust the arc of their own universe.” Thomas, winner of the Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and the Neil Postman Award for Metaphor, appears with poets Kim Addonizio, Tracey Knapp and Yaccaira Salvatierra at Green Apple Books on Ninth Avenue in San Francisco on Nov. 11.