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 October 5, 2025.
Check out two recent releases featured on this week’s bestseller list. Richard Osman returns with The Impossible Fortune, the latest installment in his Thursday Murder Club series. When a guest goes missing at a wedding, returning characters Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim reunite to solve another mystery. In Heart the Lover, author Lily King tells an unconventional story. Decades after leaving a college love triangle, narrator Jordan is forced to reckon with the choices she made and the people she left behind.
For a full list of titles and categories, visit the California Independent Booksellers Alliance.•
Southern CaliforniaHARDCOVER FICTION
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The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman, Pamela Dorman Books, $30What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30Katabasis, R.F. Kuang, Harper Voyager, $32The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown, Doubleday, $38Alchemised, SenLinYu, Del Rey, $35HARDCOVER NONFICTION
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107 Days, Kamala Harris, Simon & Schuster, $30Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love, Samin Nosrat, Random House, $45We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, Jill Lepore, Liveright, $39.99The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About, Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins, Hay House, $29.99Poems & Prayers, Matthew McConaughey, Crown, $29TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION
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I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman and Ros Schwartz (translator), Transit Books, $16.95Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar, Vintage, $18. Watch the author speak at a California Book Club event.The Lion Women of Tehran, Marjan Kamali, Gallery Books, $18.99Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout, Random House Trade Paperbacks, $18TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION
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On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, Michael Finkel, Vintage, $18Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering, Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books, $21.99The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Penguin Books, $19The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, Hampton Sides, Vintage, $19Northern CaliforniaHARDCOVER FICTION
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The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman, Pamela Dorman Books, $30The Secret of Secrets, Dan Brown, Doubleday, $38What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30Alchemised, SenLinYu, Del Rey, $35Heart the Lover, Lily King, Grove Press, $28HARDCOVER NONFICTION
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107 Days, Kamala Harris, Simon & Schuster, $30Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love, Samin Nosrat, Random House, $45We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, Jill Lepore, Liveright, $39.99All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation, Elizabeth Gilbert, Riverhead Books, $35Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy, Mary Roach, W.W. Norton & Company, $28.99TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION 
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Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout, Random House Trade Paperbacks, $18Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22The Life Impossible, Matt Haig, Penguin, $19The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami and Philip Gabriel (translator), Vintage, $19TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION
Alta
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, $20The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan, Knopf, $36. Read a recap of the California Book Club event. Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering, Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books, $21.99Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, Yuval Noah Harari, Random House Trade Paperbacks, $25
Source: California Independent Booksellers Alliance
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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.