These are among the new titles released by Bay Area and Northern California writers, listed in alphabetical order by author names:
“Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire” by Vicki DeArmon
Sibylline Press, 320 pages, $20, April 1, 2025
Vicki DeArmon, publisher of Sibylline Press, a new Sonoma County organization publishing writing by women over 50, shares details of her younger life as a publisher in her new book. She calls it “my comic coming-of-age story in San Francisco, where at 25 I launched Foghorn Press and grew it to a 20-book a year enterprise. At the same time, I helped to launch the San Francisco Bay Area Books Festival … and produced the 25th anniversary of Earth Day in the Presidio. As a young woman, I operated without fear (and some naivete) in a landscape of good old boys. I was on the Chamber of Commerce board, president of the San Francisco Book Council (which I helped found…) and I was responsible for feature stories in Publishers Weekly about the Bay Area publishing scene.” She adds, “I was only one of many” of the movers and shakers of the times. Novelist Nina Schuyler said of the book: “Packed with heart, humor, and hard-earned wisdom, it’s a story you won’t want to put down—or see end.”
“Sky Daddy” by Kate Folk
Random House, 368 pages, $29, April 8, 2025
Kate Folk, a San Francisco author screenwriter and educator, was a finalist for a California Book Award for her short story collection “Out There,” which she adapted into a screenplay. Her comic, touching and weird Bay Area-set debut novel “Sky Daddy” is about a San Francisco woman with a dead-end job and a sexual obsession with airplanes she acts upon in repeated visits to the airport. Publishers Weekly called it “wry, tender and sweetly odd” and “an unforgettable ode to the pursuit of desire.” Oprah Daily’s recommendation said, “We can’t remember the last time we met a character this singular or read a book this funny.”
“Big Chief” by Jon Hickey
Simon & Schuster, 319 pages, $28.99, April 8, 2025
San Francisco writer Jon Hickey, a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, offers a detailed and emotional account of modern life on a fictional tribal reservation in Wisconsin in his first novel. Telling the story of a tribal leader being challenged by an activist in an upcoming election, the book explores corruption, loyalty, relationships, questions of identity, spirituality and the sanctity of sovereign nations. Though Hickey digs into historical and legal issues surrounding reservation life, he says that research wasn’t the overriding role in developing “Big Chief,” noting that, “The book’s more about the human side of it.” Kirkus Reviews said of the novel: “A big-minded book about small-town politics.”
“Much Ado About Keanu: A Critical Reeves Theory” by Sezin Devi Koehler
Chicago Review Press, 320 pages, $29, April 29, 2025
Sezin Devi Koehler, a Northern California pop culture writer (for Entertainment Weekly, The Daily Beast, and others, and author of indie horror novels) serves up a compilation of fun, insightful essays about Keanu Reeves, one of America’s most popular, prolific and often misunderstood movie stars. Though some have knocked Reeves’ acting, Koehler shows how, during his 40-year career and 78 films, so far, the mixed-race performer has made significant strides for Asian and Indigenous representation. Screenwriter and producer Holly Sorensen calls “Much Ado” a “wonderfully readable take on one of our most beloved artists” in which the author reveals “what makes Keanu so cool and transcendent, so enigmatic and important with wit and sophisticated analysis.”
“Francine’s Spectacular Crash and Burn” by Renee Swindle
Tiny Reparations Books, 320 pages, $19, April 15, 2025
Oakland author Renee Swindle, known for writing lovingly about her characters and their foibles, sets her fourth novel in her hometown. It’s about how a woman’s chance encounter with a neurodivergent 10-year-old who shows up at her door after her mother’s sudden death turns into an adventure of self-discovery. Swindle says she had a neurodivergent reader give her the OK about her characterization of the super smart, tell-it-like-it-is young boy; she also made extra effort to offer realistic descriptions of Oakland and the East Bay, particularly class issues. One commenter on Goodreads writes, “This book has humor, depth, a main character you can’t help but root for – and a little boy that wanders into her life that will absolutely steal your heart.”
“Down in the Sea of Angels” by Khan Wong
Angry Robot, 400 pages $18.99, April 2025
Khan Wong, the San Francisco author of “The Circus Infinite,” which was a finalist for the Lambda LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction Award 2023, has been a circus producer, published poet and cellist in a folk-rock group. He describes his new speculative fiction offering, the 2106-set “Down in the Sea of Angels,” as an “intense and thoughtful time-traveling dystopian fantasy where three individuals, psychically linked through time, fight enslavement, exploitation and environmental collapse.” Among the San Francisco-set book’s main characters is an individual who has the ability of psychometry, which allows her to touch an object and know its entire history. Publishers Weekly’s review said, “This stirring novel is an inspiration during trying times. ”
The post Bay City Books: New books from Bay Area and Northern California authors – April 2025 appeared first on Local News Matters.