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• Crossing California: A Cultural Topography of a Land of Wonder and Weirdness

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  A Cultural Topography of a Land of Wonder and Weirdness by Sam McManis Sacramento Bee journalist Sam McManis spent five years on the road trying to find the real California. He discovered that there is more than one California, but every different California is equally weird and wonderful. Worlds collide and commingle: the neo-hippies with the rednecked farmers; the urban sophisticates with the quirky desert dwellers; the Hollywood power brokers with the Outsider Artists. Brought together in a bouillabaisse of voices, Crossing California will make you see the state in an entirely new light. From the briny scent of Fisherman’s Wharf to the fragrant sage scrub of Imperial County; from the otherworldly starkness of Death Valley to the crashing waves and flexing muscles at Venice Beach, Crossing California gives readers a first-hand experience. McManis has stalked the tony aisles of the newly minted Broad Museum in gentrified downtown Los Angeles, and quick-footed it through the International Banana Museum along the desiccated shores of the moonscaped Salton Sea. He has inadvertently gotten his car stuck in a tree at a cheesy drive-thru giant Sequoia roadside attraction along the hemp highway between Mendocino and Humboldt, and witnessed, with both fascination and can’t-look-away horror, grown men and women, sans children and sans inhibitions, belt out full-throated versions of "Let It Go" at a Disneyland sing-along. All told, Crossing California is a trip. Audience: Readers interested in California culture, history, oddities, and humor. About the Author: Sam McManis is a former columnist and feature writer for the Sacramento Bee. He is a four-time winner of the Society of Features Journalism awards and three-time Best of the West honoree. He also has been a staff writer and editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times. His profiles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. He lives and writes in Washington state. $14.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6" x 9" • 280 pages ISBN 978-1-61035-313-7

• The Edge: The Pressured Past and Precarious Future of California's Coast

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  Kim Steinhardt and Gary Griggs The Pacific coast is the most iconic region of California and one of the most fascinating and rapidly changing places in the world. Densely populated, urbanized, and industrialized—and also home to complex, fragile ecosystems—the coast is the place where humanity and nature coexist in a precarious balance that is never perfectly stable. The Edge is a dramatic snapshot of the California coast’s past, present, and probable future in a time of climate change and expanding human activity. Written by two marine experts who grew up on the coast, The Edge is both an appreciation of the coast’s natural and cultural uniqueness and a warning of the changes that threaten that uniqueness. As ocean levels rise, coastal communities are starting to erode, and entire neighborhoods have been lost to the sea. Coastal ecosystems and wildlife that were already stressed by human settlement now face new dangers. Fisheries, oil drilling, recreation, housing and environmental advocates compete to define the future of the region. A masterful and sweeping synthesis of environmental and social science, The Edge presents a comprehensive portrait of the history, people, communities, industries, ecology, and wildlife of the coast.

• California's Deadliest Women

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  Dangerous Dames and Murderous Moms by David Kulczyk Illustrations by Olaf Jens Publication Date: September 2016 According to all the sexist clichés, women are nurturers, not murderers. But women do kill … and when they do, the results are devastating. A masterpiece of pure trashy tabloid fun, California’s Deadliest Women is the definitive guide to the murderesses of the Golden State, a horrifying compendium of women driven to kill by jealousy, greed, desperation, or their own inner demons. California’s Deadliest Women presents 28 mini-tragedies — sardonic, tightly written profiles of some of the most ghastly crimes ever committed in California. Each lethal vignette presents a murderer’s early life, thecircumstances that drove her to murder, her detection, her punishment, and the aftermath of her terrible deeds, plus quirky, disturbing caricatures of the killers by artist Olaf Jens. The murderers in California’s Deadliest Women aren’t passive instruments of male masterminds, like the women of the Manson Family. These are women who got their hands bloody, personally killing their victims, who often were their own husbands, lovers or children. From Brynn Hartman, who killed her husband, comedian Phil Hartman, to chemist Larissa Shuster, who dissolved her husband in acid, to dominatirix Omaima Aree Nelson, who cooked and ate her husband, the killers profiled in California’s Deadliest Women show that the fairer sex can be as evil — and as deadly — as any man. The stories in California’s Deadliest Women are shocking and lurid, but also filled with compassion for victim and murderer alike. There are no heroes in this book and no happy endings. The crimes are so bizarre, so puzzling, so corrupt, so disgusting, so gory, so inhumane and so despicable that they are unforgettable … and perversely fascinating and entertaining. Audience: True crime readers, California history readers, and lovers of the bizarre. About the Author: David Kulczyk (pronounced Coal-check) is a Sacramento-based crime historian. His previous books include California Justice (2008), Death in California (2009) and California Fruits, Flakes and Nuts (2013), all available from Craven Street Books. $14.95 ($18.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 6" x 9" • 140 pages ISBN 978-1-61035-280-2

• PRODIGAL SONS- PB

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  In the late 19th century, Christopher Evans, a former scout for George Custer?s 7th Cavalry, and John Sontag, an ex-railroad man, became the most wanted criminals in all of California. What series of events could have transformed such men into despised outlaws? How did Evans and Sontag end up in a frenzied life and death struggle with the law? Prodigal Sons tells the exciting and entertaining saga of these two men, detailing their lives from childhood until the aftermath of their violent collision with the powerful interests controlling California at that time. The cast of real-life characters enmeshed in this lurid account include the Dalton gang, U.S. Marshal Vernon C. Wilson (who boasted he had 27 notches on his gun and Evans and Sontag would make 29), Pelon and Jericho, the Southern Pacific Railroad, and Wells Fargo & Co.

• THE SANDS OF TAMANRASSET [LSI]

  $17.95 $10.77 0 review(s)

  
  

  The biography of Charles de Foucauld, a French nobleman who put off the trappings of nobility and a career in the military to take on the ascetic life of a desert priest. An amazing story of self discipline, courage and self sacrifice. Foucauld transformed himself from a high living nobleman to a desert priest who found his life work in the deep Sahara.

• THE SEPOY MUTINY 1857: AN ANNOTATED CHECKLIST OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE BOOKS

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  The largest and most comprehensive checklist on the Indian Mutiny since the publication, in 1966, of The Revolt in India by Janice Ladendorf. Includes approximately 1160 entries with author, publisher, date and place of publication, annotation, and the institution holding a copy. An extensive 24 page index is included.