California Memoir

In May 1972, Liese Greensfelder arrived in the small Norwegian town of Øystese to startling news: Johannes, the farmer who hired her for the summer, had just been hospitalized after a stroke. Could she please watch over his place for a month or so, until he got back on his feet? Twenty years old and with no farming experience, Liese was dropped off the next day at a centuries-old mountain farm at the end of a dirt road high above the magnificent Hardanger Fjord—with 115 sheep, two cows, one calf, a draft horse, and a Norwegian herding dog to care for.

One day during his ninth-grade speech class, Kelly Daniels's outlaw, soul-surfer father appears at school unannounced and pulls the boy from class. Speeding down the freeway, Daniels's father admits that he has been involved in a crime, but he does not remember how it happened. He'd been up for days on cocaine and booze, he explains, and the next thing he knew he woke up in jail with a bad feeling.

California’s fire season gets hotter, longer, and more extreme every year - fire season is now year-round. Of the thousands of firefighters who battle California’s blazes every year, roughly 30 percent of the on-the-ground wildland crews are inmates earning a dollar an hour. Approximately 200 of those firefighters are women serving on all-female crews. In Breathing Fire, Jaime Lowe expands on her revelatory work for The New York Times Magazine.

“Go slow,” his political elders advised him, but Gavin Newsom has never known such a speed. For Newsom, the California Dream is what lured his father’s family from County Cork, Ireland, six generations ago. His great-great-grandfather, a cop, walked a beat in San Francisco, where almost 150 years later, Newsom would be elected as mayor, running on the values instilled in him by his family history: that California’s open arms must continue to extend to each new generation.

An intimate portrait of a tortured player, this biography culls interviews, letters, and the personal account of baseball legend Willie Mays Aikens. Touted from a young age as the next Reggie Jackson, Aikens' promising career quickly turned disastrous when he fell into drug abuse and was ultimately sentenced to the longest prison sentence ever given to a professional athlete in a drug case.

In 2012, 25-year-old Jackie Moyer—the daughter of a forbidden marriage between a white American father and a Punjabi American mother—was a new organic farmer with 10 acres of land in Gold Hill, California. With a fractured relationship to her heritage, Moyer saw an opportunity for repair when she decided to grow an heirloom wheat variety called Sonora. Sonora wasn’t just an heirloom wheat strain; it was her own cultural heirloom. Jackie uncovers how the history of this hardy wheat mirrors her family's multigenerational story of resilience.

The Hanging Judge of California probes outrageous decisions by the Federal 9th Circuit Court in overturning death penalty verdicts. California Judge Donald A. McCartin, who sent nine men to death row, speaks out in fury when convicted child killer Rodney Alcala's verdict was overturned after 23 years. The audiobook chronicles Alcala's crimes and trials, as well as the horrific murders committed by eight other killers who were sentenced by McCartin.

Embracing My Inner Lunatic covers the years following my Playgirl Centerfold and strip dancing adventures. Careening through my thirties, which are even wilder than my 20s, I fall in and out of love and try to understand myself and my inability to live a conventional life. Managing gyms grounded me yet provided constant temptation and many pleasurable encounters leading me away from the life I was seeking. Sex, exercise, and drugs fueled my life. Including many photos and a short erotic story.

Prohibition. Mobsters, murder, and mayhem. FBI agents. Cops, robbers, and worse. Sound like the background for a Hollywood epic? It's Ernest Marquez's latest very true story of the renowned gambling ships that anchored in Santa Monica Bay in the 1920s and 1930s. It's the story of Tony Cornero, the cockiest gangster who ever bootlegged a bottle of scotch, the man who helped found Las Vegas, and the smooth operator of the most glamorous gambling ship in the Pacific, the Rex.

Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta tells the infamous story of Joaquin’s life, his bloody career and his gruesome fate. With careful research and never-before-told stories of the violent trail Murrieta and his gang left in their wake, award-winning author and definitive Wild West historian John Boessenecker separates fact from fiction in this gripping portrait of the California Gold Rush era, for readers of Tom Clavin and H. W. Brands.

Governor Culbert L. Olson is one of the most important and prominent men you have probably never heard of. Elected governor of California in 1938, he is noted for being the first Democratic governor of the state in over 40 years. His term spanned the years 1939 to 1943, years of tumult and trial for California and for all of America. It included the last part of America's Great Depression and the first part of World War II. Olson led California through this difficult time with a progressive agenda known as Olson's "New Deal for California."

As described in Readers’ Favorite Review by Vincent Dublado… “James H. Morgan magnificently captures the nostalgia of the 1960s. There is power in the recollection of ordinary people chronicling their experience in specific times in history because it gives a powerful illustration of how ordinary citizens lived and witnessed history… The beauty of The Reject Bench is that Morgan skillfully blends both the mundane and colorful episodes in his life and how they are shaped by the events of the times. How he views the looming war in Vietnam captures the sentiments of a considerable ...

For nearly a decade, Palley has been on the frontline of fire. He has witnessed homeowners on the worst day of their lives. He’s seen puddles of aluminum where cars were once parked. He’s watched as 150-foot walls of flame cascaded down mountainsides and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. And he’s captured, time and again, the tireless commitment of firefighters as they work to save lives and homes, in terrain where fire always seems to have the upper hand.

Gary Reid Galbreath was born and raised in California and knew from a young age that he wanted to devote himself to the pursuit of justice. From donning his first seersucker suit at four to his career in law enforcement, he was determined to seek out the truth and level the playing field. Little did he know that seeking the truth and finding justice as a California State Lottery Investigator would get him labeled as a whistleblower. Fired and shunned by the very people he thought would support him in his quest for fairness, Reid shares his story of vindication and clearing his name.

Many of the women who went west for the gold rush shared the same eagerness for adventure as the men (in contrast to the conventional image of the long-suffering martyr accompanying her husband). Levy intersperses her text with excerpts from diaries and journals and concludes with brief biographies of 17 women participants.

Hermosa Beach, California, in the mid-1960s. Sun, surf, and sand castles along The Strand to a soundtrack of “Fun, Fun, Fun.” But the hang-loose life of the locals was soon being drowned out—by a social storm able to turn even the most perfect wave into a brutal riptide. How do you go from planning vacations and evaluating investments to planning prison visits and evaluating defense pleas? How do you watch your surfer-champion sons turn into drug lords? Inmates? How do you watch your entire family die, one by one? Yet never stop fighting. It takes a rare and special person: Karl McMillen.

In this first biography of Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. in more than 30 years, Chuck McFadden explores the unique persona of one of the most idiosyncratic politicians in California history. The son of California political royalty who forged his own political style against the tumultuous backdrop of a huge, balkanized state - and shoved to and fro by complex currents - Jerry Brown pursued visionary impulses as well as his grandiose ambitions.

"The employee is regarded by the employer merely in the light of his value as an operative. His productive capacity alone is taken into account." (Stanford) Leland Stanford: The Life and Legacy of the Railroad Executive Who Became California’s Governor and the West’s Most Famous Robber Baron chronicles the remarkable life of Stanford.

The Apostolic School That Wasn’t... narrates a gripping account of how a rugged and picturesque 240 acre property in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada slowly transformed into an accredited minor seminary, junior high, and high school for boys interested in the Catholic priesthood, then flourished, floundered, and finally shuttered. Situated between the action of God’s divine providence and human realities, the narration seeks to give witness to the faith and effort of the many persons involved in the project, while exploring the reasons that led to the school’s demise.

For over a decade, I’ve been captivated by the idea of this book, which goes beyond profiling well-known locals in Orange County. It focuses on individuals who contribute significantly to the region’s culture and beyond, showcasing a diverse range of stories. Orange County isn’t just a location; it’s a hub of creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation—from surf culture to tech giants.