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 January 25, 2026.
This week’s list features two nonfiction titles that address different facets of culture. Just in time for the Super Bowl: Football by Chuck Klosterman breaks down how one of the most watched sports in America is ingrained in every part of our lives—even for those who don’t watch it. In Want, editor Gillian Anderson presents anonymously written confessions sent in by women worldwide.
For a full list of titles and categories, visit the California Independent Booksellers Alliance.•
Southern CaliforniaHARDCOVER FICTION
Alta
The Correspondent, Virginia Evans, Crown, $28Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy, Ballantine Books, $30Heart the Lover, Lily King, Grove Press, $28What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Kiran Desai, Hogarth, $32HARDCOVER NONFICTION
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Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster, Jacob Soboroff, Mariner Books, $30A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, Sophie Elmhirst, Riverhead Books, $28One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad, Knopf, $28Football, Chuck Klosterman, Penguin Press, $32Bread of Angels: A Memoir, Patti Smith, Random House, $30TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION
Alta
Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid, Carina Press, $18.99Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22The Long Game, Rachel Reid, Carina Press, $18.99Theo of Golden, Allen Levi, Atria Books, $20Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell, Vintage, $19TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION
Alta
All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, William Morrow, $16.99On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder, Crown, $12The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Vintage, $21Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor, Riverhead Books, $20Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18
Northern California
HARDCOVER FICTION
Alta
The Correspondent, Virginia Evans, Crown, $28The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Kiran Desai, Hogarth, $32Heart the Lover, Lily King, Grove Press, $28Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy, Ballantine Books, $30What We Can Know, Ian McEwan, Knopf, $30HARDCOVER NONFICTION
Alta
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Viking, $35A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, Sophie Elmhirst, Riverhead Books, $28The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About, Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins, Hay House, $29.99One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad, Knopf, $28Bread of Angels: A Memoir, Patti Smith, Random House, $30TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION 
Alta
Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell, Vintage, $19Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid, Carina Press, $18.99Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir, Ballantine, $22Theo of Golden, Allen Levi, Atria Books, $20Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt, Ecco, $19.99TRADE 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 Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, David Grann, Vintage, $21I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy, Simon and Schuster, $19.99Want, Anonymous and Gillian Anderson (editor), Abrams Press, $18
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.