Alta Journal’s California Bestsellers List (August 7, 2025)

With reporting from the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Alta Journal brings you a list of the bestselling titles at independent bookstores across Northern and Southern California for the week ending August 3, 2025.

Check out these summer releases from the indie bestsellers list. Out now is Gwyneth, by Amy Odell, a biography of the ever-controversial Gwyneth Paltrow. Using information gleaned from over 200 interviews with those closest to the A-lister, Odell paints an intimate portrait of an icon both admired and criticized. On the fiction side is Culpability, by Bruce Holsinger, a novel about the Cassidy-Shaw family and the emotional wreckage that follows a car crash—one that might not have been an accident after all.

For a full list of titles and categories, visit the California Independent Booksellers Alliance.•

Southern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Atmosphere: A Love Story, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Ballantine Books, $30
2. The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong, Penguin Press, $30
3. Culpability, Bruce Holsinger, Spiegel & Grau, $30
4. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, V.E. Schwab, Tor Books, $29.99
5. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About, Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins, Hay House, $29.99
2. Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Avid Reader Press, $30
3. Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, John Green, Crash Course Books, $28
4. A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, Sophie Elmhirst, Riverhead Books, $28
5. Gwyneth: The Biography, Amy Odell, Gallery Books, $30.99

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar, Vintage, $18. Watch the author speak at a California Book Club event.
2. I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman and Ros Schwartz (translator), Transit Books, $16.95
3. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $20
4. All Fours, Miranda July, Riverhead Books, $19. Read the Alta review.
5. Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12
2. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Vintage, $21
3. Didion and Babitz, Lili Anolik, Scribner, $20. Read the Alta interview.
4. All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, Patrick Bringley, Simon & Schuster, $18.99
5. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Julia Cameron, TarcherPerigee, $24

Northern California

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong, Penguin Press, $30
2. Atmosphere: A Love Story, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Ballantine Books, $30
3. James, Percival Everett, Doubleday, $28. Read an excerpt in Alta.
4. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, V.E. Schwab, Tor Books, $29.99
5. My Friends, Fredrik Backman, Atria Books, $29.99

HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Avid Reader Press, $30
2. The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About, Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins, Hay House, $29.99
3. The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, Suleika Jaouad, Random House, $30
4. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Robin Wall Kimmerer and John Burgoyne (illustrator), Scribner, $20
5. Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, John Green, Crash Course Books, $28

TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION

1. Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99
2. Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar, Vintage, $18. Watch the author speak at a California Book Club event.
3. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $20
4. All Fours, Miranda July, Riverhead Books, $19. Read the Alta review.
5. Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver, Harper Perennial, $21.99

TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION

1. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12
2. Didion and Babitz, Lili Anolik, Scribner, $20. Read the Alta interview.
3. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, Michael Finkel, Vintage, $18
4. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Vintage, $21
5. The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan, Knopf, $36. Register for the California Book Club event.

Source: California Independent Booksellers Alliance

Elizabeth Casillas

Elizabeth Casillas is an assistant editor at Alta Journal. A graduate of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, she has previously written for the Poly Post and Enspire Magazine.