These are among the many new titles launched by Bay Space and Northern California writers, listed in alphabetical order by creator names:
“Foghorn: The Practically True Story of a Small Publishing Empire” by Vicki DeArmon
Sibylline Press, 320 pages, $20, April 1, 2025
Vicki DeArmon, writer of Sibylline Press, a brand new Sonoma County group publishing writing by girls over 50, shares particulars of her youthful life as a writer in her new guide. She calls it “my comedian coming-of-age story in San Francisco, the place at 25 I launched Foghorn Press and grew it to a 20-book a 12 months enterprise. On the identical time, I helped to launch the San Francisco Bay Space Books Pageant … and produced the twenty fifth anniversary of Earth Day within the Presidio. As a younger lady, I operated with out concern (and a few naivete) in a panorama of fine outdated boys. I used to be on the Chamber of Commerce board, president of the San Francisco Ebook Council (which I helped discovered…) and I used to be chargeable for characteristic tales in Publishers Weekly in regards to the Bay Space publishing scene.” She provides, “I used to be solely one in every of many” of the movers and shakers of the occasions. Novelist Nina Schuyler stated of the guide: “Filled with coronary heart, humor, and hard-earned knowledge, it’s a narrative you gained’t need to put down—or see finish.”
“Sky Daddy” by Kate People
Random Home, 368 pages, $29, April 8, 2025
Kate People, a San Francisco creator screenwriter and educator, was a finalist for a California Ebook Award for her brief story assortment “Out There,” which she tailored right into a screenplay. Her comedian, touching and peculiar Bay Space-set debut novel “Sky Daddy” is a few San Francisco lady with a dead-end job and a sexual obsession with airplanes she acts upon in repeated visits to the airport. Publishers Weekly known as it “wry, tender and sweetly odd” and “an unforgettable ode to the pursuit of want.” Oprah Each day’s advice stated, “We will’t bear in mind the final time we met a personality this singular or learn a guide this humorous.”
“Huge Chief” by Jon Hickey
Simon & Schuster, 319 pages, $28.99, April 8, 2025
San Francisco author Jon Hickey, a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, presents an in depth and emotional account of recent life on a fictional tribal reservation in Wisconsin in his first novel. Telling the story of a tribal chief being challenged by an activist in an upcoming election, the guide explores corruption, loyalty, relationships, questions of identification, spirituality and the sanctity of sovereign nations. Although Hickey digs into historic and authorized points surrounding reservation life, he says that analysis wasn’t the overriding position in growing “Huge Chief,” noting that, “The guide’s extra in regards to the human aspect of it.” Kirkus Opinions stated of the novel: “A giant-minded guide about small-town politics.”
“A lot Ado About Keanu: A Important Reeves Concept” by Sezin Devi Koehler
Chicago Evaluation Press, 320 pages, $29, April 29, 2025
Sezin Devi Koehler, a Northern California popular culture author (for Leisure Weekly, The Each day Beast, and others, and creator of indie horror novels) serves up a compilation of enjoyable, insightful essays about Keanu Reeves, one in every of America’s hottest, prolific and infrequently misunderstood film stars. Although some have knocked Reeves’ appearing, Koehler exhibits how, throughout his 40-year profession and 78 movies, thus far, the mixed-race performer has made important strides for Asian and Indigenous illustration. Screenwriter and producer Holly Sorensen calls “A lot Ado” a “splendidly readable tackle one in every of our most beloved artists” during which the creator reveals “what makes Keanu so cool and transcendent, so enigmatic and necessary with wit and complicated evaluation.”
“Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn” by Renee Swindle
Tiny Reparations Books, 320 pages, $19, April 15, 2025
Oakland creator Renee Swindle, identified for writing lovingly about her characters and their foibles, units her fourth novel in her hometown. It’s about how a girl’s likelihood encounter with a neurodivergent 10-year-old who exhibits up at her door after her mom’s sudden loss of life turns into an journey of self-discovery. Swindle says she had a neurodivergent reader give her the OK about her characterization of the tremendous sensible, tell-it-like-it-is younger boy; she additionally made additional effort to supply life like descriptions of Oakland and the East Bay, significantly class points. One commenter on Goodreads writes, “This guide has humor, depth, a major character you may’t assist however root for – and a little bit boy that wanders into her life that may completely steal your coronary heart.”
“Down within the Sea of Angels” by Khan Wong
Offended Robotic, 400 pages $18.99, April 2025
Khan Wong, the San Francisco creator of “The Circus Infinite,” which was a finalist for the Lambda LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction Award 2023, has been a circus producer, revealed poet and cellist in a folk-rock group. He describes his new speculative fiction providing, the 2106-set “Down within the Sea of Angels,” as an “intense and considerate time-traveling dystopian fantasy the place three people, psychically linked via time, battle enslavement, exploitation and environmental collapse.” Among the many San Francisco-set guide’s major characters is a person who has the flexibility of psychometry, which permits her to the touch an object and know its complete historical past. Publishers Weekly’s evaluate stated, “This stirring novel is an inspiration throughout attempting occasions. ”
