LOCAL AUTHORS

Walden Pond Books endeavors to keep new and used copies of books by local authors in stock at all times.

Living in Oakland (or in close proximity):
• Daniel Alarcón: War by Candlelight: Stories (2005), Lost City Radio (2007), The Secret Miracle: The Novelist's Handbook (2010)
  

  (Harper)	Wars, both national and internal, are being waged in jungles, across borders, in the streets of Lima, in the intimacy of New York apartments. War by Candlelight is an exquisite collection of stories that carry the reader from Third World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people -- a devastating portrait of a world in flux.
  (Harper)	As the host of Lost City Radio, Norma reads the names of those who have disappeared in the violence of a decade-long civil war. Through her efforts lovers are reunited and the lost are found. But her own life is about to forever change—thanks to the arrival of a young boy from the jungle who provides a cryptic clue to the fate of Norma's vanished husband.
  (MacMillan)	In The Secret Miracle editor and author Daniel Alarcón brings together the foremost practitioners of the craft to discuss how they write. Paul Auster, Roddy Doyle, Allegra Goodman, Aleksandar Hemon, Mario Vargas Llosa, Susan Minot, Rick Moody, Haruki Murakami, George Pelecanos, Gary Shteyngart, and others.

• Elaine Beale: Another Life Altogether (2010)
• Joshua Braff: Peep Show (2010)
• Novella Carpenter: Farm City - The Education of an Urban Farmer (2009)
  

  (Penguin)	Farm City has been nominated for the 2010 Northern California Book Award for Creative Nonfiction! Novella Carpenter turned a vacant lot in Oakland, California, into a working mini-farm, complete with vegetables, herbs, pigs, chickens, ducks, and bees. This utterly enchanting book chronicles the author's experiences as an urban farmer with wit, grace, and style.

• Michael Chabon: (featured/favorite author) The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), A Model World and Other Stories (1991), Wonder Boys (1995), Werewolves in Their Youth (1999), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), Summerland (2002), The Final Solution (2004), The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), Gentlemen of the Road (2007), Maps and Legends (2008), Manhood for Amateurs (2009)
  

  (Harper)	The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon's first work of fiction, began as a university degree thesis, became a 1988 bestseller, and launched the literary career of this gifted author. The recently reissued edition of the book features an author's addendum which details some of the inspiration, problems and process by which the novel was written.
  (Harper)	In The Final Solution, Michael Chabon has condensed his boundless vision to craft a suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that reimagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story. Swiss bank accounts, a nine-year-old refugee from Nazi Germany, a parrot who speaks in code... Subtle revelations lead the reader to a wrenching resolution. This brilliant homage is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.
  (Harper)	Maps and Legends is Chabon’s first collection of nonfiction. "A writer of prodigious literary gifts, Chabon brings the velocity, verve, and emotional richness intrinsic to the best of short stories to his exceptionally canny and stirring essays... A writer so versatile he seems to be a master of disguises, Chabon provides invaluable keys to his frolicsome creativity and literary chutzpah in this truly entertaining collection." — Booklist
  (Harper)	"A Model World and Other Stories [is] an exceptional collection ... These subtly ironic tales have a brevity and clarity that allows Chabon's bittersweet observations to hit home ... He deftly creates believable situations made remarkable by underlying twists of motivation and behavior." — Publisher's Weekly "These stories…establish [Chabon] as one of his generation’s most eloquent new voices." — New York Times

• Carolina De Robertis: The Invisible Mountain (2009)
• Charlie Haas: The Enthusiast (2009) (store event)
  

  (Harper)	"Haas shows a skilled literary hand in his sharp first novel. The compelling side characters are central to the novel’s charm…but the characters encountered aren’t dismissed as freaks; rather, they’re examined with a near curatorial zeal. This is a slick first novel: funny, thought provoking and a little alarming." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• Maxine Hong Kingston: The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976), China Men (1980), Through the Black Curtain (1987), Hawai'i One Summer (1987), Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), To Be the Poet (2002), The Fifth Book of Peace (2003), Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006)
• Renay Jackson: Oaktown Devil (2004), Shakey’s Loose (2004), Turf War (2005), Peanut’s Revenge (2006), Crack City (2006), Sweetpea's Secret (2008)
• Saul Landau: Assassination on Embassy Row (1981), My Dad was not Hamlet (1994), The Guerrilla Wars of Central America: Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala (1994), Red Hot Radio: Sex, Violence and Politics at the End of the American Century (1999), The Pre-Emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom (2003), The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can Reverse the Trend (2004), A Bush & Botox World: Travels Through Bush's America (2007)
• Yiyun Li: A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2006), The Vagrants (2009)
• Ishmael Reed: The Freelance Pallbearers (1967), Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969), Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Neo-HooDoo Manifesto (1972), Conjure: Selected Poems, (1963-1970, 1972), Chattanooga: Poems (1973), The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974), Flight to Canada (1976), Secretary to the Spirits (1978), Shrovetide in Old New Orleans: Essays (1978), The Terrible Twos (1982), God Made Alaska for the Indians: Selected Essays (1982), Reckless Eyeballing (1986), New and Collected Poetry (1988), Writing is Fighting: Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper (1988), The Terrible Threes (1989), Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards (1980-1990), Airing Dirty Laundry (1993), Japanese by Spring (1993), Conversations with Ishmael Reed (1995), Blues City: A Walk in Oakland (2003), Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies and Other Reflections (2008), Ishmael Reed: The Plays (2009), Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers (2010)
• Kathryn Reiss: Time Windows (1991), The Glass House People (1992), Dreadful Sorry (1993), Pale Phoenix (1994), Paperquake: A Puzzle (1998), Riddle of the Prairie Bride (2001), The Strange Case of Baby H (2002), Paint by Magic: A Time Travel Mystery (2002), Sweet Miss Honeywell's Revenge (2004), Blackthorn Winter (2006), The Tangled Web (2009)
• Mary Roach: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010)
• Bryant Terry: Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (2006), Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine (2009)
• Gail Tsukiyama: Women of the Silk (1991), The Samurai's Garden (1996), Night of Many Dreams (1998), The Language of Threads (1999), Dreaming Water (2002), The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (2007)
• Jack Vance (John Holbrook Vance): (featured/favorite author)
  Over 60 mystery, science fiction and fantasy books - most are vastly superior to any others in their respective genres. Notable individual novels include:
  To Live Forever (1956), Big Planet (1957), Slaves of the Klau (1958), The Languages of Pao (1958), Space Opera (1965), The Blue World (1966), Emphyrio (1969), The Gray Prince (The Domains of Koryphon) (1974), Showboat World (The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII, Big Planet) (1975), Maske: Thaery (1976), Galactic Effectuator (1980), Night Lamp (1996), Ports of Call (1998), Lurulu (2004).
  Notable series include: The Dying Earth series, The Lyonesse Trilogy, The Demon Princes series, The Cadwal Chronicles, The Alastor series, The Durdane series, Tschai - The Planet of Adventure series
• Ayelet Waldman: Nursery Crimes (2000), The Big Nap (2001), Playdate With Death (2002), Daughter's Keeper (2003), Death Gets a Time-Out (2003), Murder Plays House (2004), The Cradle Robbers (2005), Because I Said So (2005), Bye-Bye, Black Sheep (2006), Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (2006), Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace (2009), Red Hook Road (2010)
• William Wong: Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America (2001), Oakland's Chinatown (2004)

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL AUTHOR! Spring/Summer, 2010: Michael Chabon
Harper "An immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist... creating a completely fictional world... persuasively detailed..., even as it gives the reader a gripping murder mystery and one of the most appealing detective heroes to come along since Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. " — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Random House "A big, ripe, excitingly imaginative novel... " — Janet Maslin, New York Times "The pure reach and music and weight of Chabon's imagination are extraordinary, born of brilliant ambition you don't even notice because it is so deeply entertaining." — Elizabeth McCracken, Washington Post "Raucous, acidulous, decidedly impolite, yet stylistically arresting, this book is bloody brilliant - and if it's way over the top, that's what makes Chabon such a great writer." — Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal	Walden Pond Books salutes local author Michael Chabon For over two decades, East Bay author Michael Chabon has consistently produced some of the finest fiction and non-fiction any book store could hope to stock. His first two novels, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys "catapulted him to literary celebrity" and his The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay won the first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in the 21st century. The Yiddish Policeman's Union won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2007 and was immediately followed up in the same year with Gentlemen of the Road. (Click here for a complete list of Michael Chabon's works.) Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son was certainly Walden Pond Books' favorite work of non-fiction in 2009. The chapters on childhood reading and the author's championing of genre fiction are especially dear to the hearts of some of our staff. (On a sheerly mercenary note, sales of this book over the past holiday season virtually paid our rent for December.) And speaking of championing genre fiction... Quite possibly the finest historical swashbuckler writtten in the past century, Frans Gunnar Bengtsson's The Long Ships is at long last coming back into print this summer - with a new introduction by Michael Chabon.	Harper “Both lyrical and side-splittingly funny. . . . Readers seeking the intelligence of Updike; the gentle, brainy appeal of Sedaris; or the literary virtuosity of Nabokov will thoroughly enjoy.” — Douglas C. Lord, Library Journal “Chabon brings his prodigiously entertaining verbal intelligence to a very personal investigation of what it means to be a father, a son, and a husband.” — Lev Grossman, Time (Top 10 Nonfiction Books Citation) “Chabon takes a big, fat swing at the essay form with his second collection and achieves success. . . . These warm and thoughtful essays underscore just how good a wordsmith Chabon is-regardless of the form he chooses.” — Jerry Eberle, Booklist “Hilarious, moving, pleasurable, disturbing, transcendent, restless. . . . And seemingly by accident, Chabon ultimately does create a composite image of ideal manhood, one that is modest, responsible, bemused, empathic, and thoughtful.” — Jeremy Adam Smith, San Francisco Chronicle “Wry and heartfelt, Chabon’s riffs uncover brand-new insights in even the most quotidian subjects. . . . He applies an unusual level of wit and candor to the form.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Michael Chabon Wikipedia entry Michael Chabon's web site

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL AUTHOR! Fall/Winter, 2009: Jack Vance
Tor Books "If you had never read Vance and were browsing a bookstore’s shelf, you might have no particular reason to choose one of his books instead of one next to it... And if you chose one of these alternatives, you would go on your way to the usual thrills with no idea that you had just missed out on encountering one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices." — New York Times Magazine, July 15, 2009 "I felt myself seized by a writer’s style in a way I had never experienced before... I read the book in a kind of rapt delirium and went looking for more." — Carlo Rotella, Director of American Studies, Boston College	Walden Pond Books salutes local author Jack Vance A true Bay Area native, Jack Vance has lived in Oakland for his entire professional career. Since his first published story, "The World-Thinker" in 1945, Vance has written over sixty books. Walden Pond Books has at least two Jack Vance fans on our staff who have consistently and unhesitatingly recommended the works of Jack Vance to our customers as some of the finest science fiction and fantasy ever published. We therefore take some delight in finding our effusiveness about this author echoed by the July 15, 2009 New York Times Magazine author profile, "The Genre Artist"	Orb Books "Jack Vance is the greatest living SF writer. His work continus to exhibit imagination, originality and style, three things sadly lacking in 95 per cent of the SF being published today." — George R. R. Martin "Vance has a velvety elegance that rivals John Gielgud reciting poetry... The remarkable consistency of Vance's poetic writing coupled with his extraordinary visions of exotic planets is one of the treasures of speculative fiction." — Washington Post Book World A Jack Vance bibliography Jack Vance Wikipedia entry The Jack Vance Archive