California Memoir

A surfer kid from Redondo Beach, California, Owen Hanson was still in his twenties when he found himself the leader of a multi-million-dollar criminal empire. What began as an attempt to fit in with the rich kids at the University of Southern California soon grew into gambling and loan sharking, which then opened the door to drug trafficking and money laundering. Hanson wasn't just involved in this stuff—he excelled at it. Living the fast-paced lifestyle of the rich and famous, Hanson felt he was finally making his father proud, never mind the questionable ethics and obvious danger of it all.

J. G. Boswell was the biggest farmer in America. He built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions, and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields". The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s, drained one of America 's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world.

Five book collection: first five states in the United States of True Crime series. Sixty chilling true crime cases of murders, kidnappings, and serial killers from across the United States!

As John Freeman writes in California Rewritten, "Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people—at the highest level—has been coming out of California and from Californians for decades now." Freeman, one of the sharpest editors working today, has followed the evolution of California's literary life since his teenage years in Sacramento. In over fifty essays inspired by his hosting of Alta Journal's popular California Book Club, he offers an essential road map to California literature now.

Claus Spreckels (1828-1908) emigrated from his homeland of Germany to the United States with only seventy-five cents in his pocket, built a sugar empire, and became one of the richest Americans in history. Migrating to San Francisco after the gold rush, Spreckels built the largest sugar beet factory of its kind in the United States. When Spreckels gave America its first sugar cube, he became the “Sugar King.” The indomitable Spreckels was a colorful and complicated character on both sides of the Pacific.

In The Browns of California, journalist and scholar Miriam Pawel weaves a narrative history that spans four generations, from August Schuckman, the Prussian immigrant who crossed the Plains in 1852 and settled on a northern California ranch, to his great-grandson Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the family homestead 140 years later. Through the prism of their lives, we gain an essential understanding of California and an appreciation of its importance.

For 46 years, author Charles Hillinger journeyed around the world writing human-interest stories for the Los Angeles Times. He also helped to create and produce special features for the popular NBC television show Real People. From these experiences comes California Characters, a collection of stories about intriguing, eccentric, or simply amazing individuals.

The Super Bowl champion wide receiver for the New England Patriots shares his inspiring story of an underdog kid who was always doubted to becoming one of the most reliable and inspiring players in the NFL. Relentless is the story of Julian Edelman's rise, and the continuing dominance of the Patriot dynasty, filled with memories of growing up with a father who was as demanding as any NFL coach, his near-constant fight to keep his intensity and competitiveness in check in high school and college, and his celebrated nine seasons with the Patriots.

One day during his ninth-grade speech class, Kelly Daniels's outlaw, soul-surfer father appears at school unannounced and pulls the boy from class. Speeding down the freeway, Daniels's father admits that he has been involved in a crime, but he does not remember how it happened. He'd been up for days on cocaine and booze, he explains, and the next thing he knew he woke up in jail with a bad feeling.

While the journey was long and brutal, Lavinia found time to keep a daily journal of the entire adventure. Later in life, upon the urging of her children and grandchildren, she wrote this book to share her overland journey in great detail with anyone who wanted to learn what it was like for those old pioneers. They risked everything for a new land and a new start, and many died on the way, but for many who made it, the risk was well worth the reward.

California Dreaming and Primal Screaming is a raw, riveting, and darkly humorous memoir chronicling a celebrated studio and touring musician’s relentless quest for mental clarity and emotional healing. Pulling back fame’s velvet curtain, it exposes the hidden struggles that fame often masks — where roaring applause and adoring fans can't silence the demons lurking in the shadows of the psyche. While many artists bask in success, too often they find it hollow, unable to fill the void within.

The narrative nonfiction, short story journalism, and photo-essays of Elihu Blotnick, between 1968 and 1980, in their full original versions, unseen or unavailable till now. Revisited by the author and newly edited, these 11 pieces tell of credit card crime, New Mexico, drug testing, the San Francisco streets, and of being walked to school by Woody Allen.

This audiobook covers famous and not-so-famous murderers, but the deaths they dealt to their victims were just as deadly, gruesome, and fatal. It didn’t matter to these soulless murderers whether death came to their anguished victims by knife, gun, bayonet, or bare hands. Listen and discover the stories behind the lingering silent sounds of those who no longer walk above ground in California - a state meant for its beauty, beaches, and bright sun.

Gruesome California is a collection of true-life stories, most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts that were published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this book have ever made it into print, except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, many of them are lucky to rate a paragraph. Listen to them now, if you dare!

Educated in Amherst, Massachusetts, Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe (1819-1906) accompanied her physician-husband to California in 1849. The Shirley Letters (1922) is the book edition of a series of letters written by Mrs. Clappe to her sister in 1851 and 1852. They were first published under the pseudonym of Dame Shirley in the Pioneer magazine, 1854-55. In these letters, Louise Clappe writes of life in San Francisco and the Feather River mining communities of Rich Bar and Indian Bar.

United States of True Crime is an anthology series with books devoted to the most disturbing cases in each of the 50 states. This audiobook focuses on 20 of the most chilling crimes in California history. True crime junkies may recognize some of the highly publicized cases but I’ve made sure to include lesser-known, equally unsettling crimes.

She was leaning against the door. Her smile was a sickly twisted grimace; the sort a prisoner gives a judge when he's asked if he has anything to say before he's sentenced. Russell Haxby is a ruthless used-car salesman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. In this classic of hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford crafts a wry, sardonic tale of hypocrisy, intrigue, and lust set in San Francisco in the early '50s.

Delve into the hidden underbelly of crime as we unveil the secrets of the Los Angeles Mafia Crime Family. From its elusive origins to its far-reaching influence, prepare to uncover the tangled web of power, intrigue, and betrayal that defined this criminal empire.