These are among the new titles released by local writers, listed in alphabetical order by author names:
“Awake in the Floating City: A Novel” by Susanna Kwan
Pantheon, 320 pages, $28, May 13, 2025
San Francisco writer Susanna Kwan explores her longtime home in depth in her debut novel “Awake in the Floating City.” Illuminating the relationship between an older woman and her caretaker, an artist, at a time when the city has been devastated by floods, the story stems from Kwan’s musings about the future. Kwan says she wanted to ask questions that future generations would be asking: “My family’s been here for a long time, but we’ve seen the city change: every few years it feels like there’s a whole new narrative.” In addition to drawing on her own memories, Kwan spent a lot of time researching at the San Francisco Public Library. “Awake in the Floating City,” she says, includes specific details of the city she knows “intimately.” She adds, “I wanted a place to layer them: things that might not appear in popular films or the news or even in books.” Meng Jin, author of the novel “Little Gods,” said about “Awake in the Floating City: “What post-apocalyptic vision dares be so gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm and caring and care taking? Luminous, wise, Susanna Kwan’s story of a flooded future San Francisco expands the known world, making room within its unbearable devastation for beauty, compassion, and love.”
“Anima Rising: A Novel” by Christopher Moore
William Morrow, 400 pages, $30, May 13, 2025
Christopher Moore, the prolific San Francisco comedy-horror writer whose novels include “Razzmatazz,” “Shakespeare for Squirrels,” “Noir,” “Secondhand Souls,” “Sacré Bleu,” “Fool” and “Lamb,” sets his newest wacky tale in the golden age of art in 20th century Austria. His publisher calls “Anima Rising” (subtitled “Klimt, Freud and Jung Meet the Bride of Frankenstein”) a “hilarious and quirky novel of self-discovery, mad science and artistic inspiration set against the backdrop of early 20th century Vienna.” Early reviews from fans on Goodreads say the book is “chock full of what you expect from Moore”: well-researched, interesting characters, his signature humor. Some said it’s slightly darker than some of his previous books. Moore’s blog has a fascinating description and beautiful images of composite sketches of possible book covers by designer Will Staehle, who tapped elements from the plot and his own knowledge of Gustav Klimt’s art to create them. Moore says, “The results are really stunning, I think, and any of them would have made a good cover.”
“The Ashtrays Are Full and the Glasses Are Empty” by Kirsten Mickelwait
Köehler Books. 324 pages, $28.95 (hardcover), $20.95 (paper), May 27, 2025
Bay Area writer Kirsten Mickelwait, who took on themes of love, disillusionment, financial upheaval and reinvention in her acclaimed memoir “The Ghost Marriage,” explores similar issues in her new Jazz Era-set historical novel. “The Ashtrays Are Full and the Glasses Are Empty” details the lives of Sara Wiborg Murphy and Gerald Murphy, a wealthy American couple living in France in the early 20th century known for their lavish parties and artsy social circle (including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso and Dorothy Parker). Mickelwait says she first became interested in the Lost Generation after encountering “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” by Calvin Tomkins, a biography of the Murphys, in a literature class when she was a sophomore in college: “ I read it and developed a lifelong obsession with them: their style, their gift for friendship, and the fact that they landed in the most creative time and place of the century.” She adds, “The real reason I wrote this book was out of my years-long desire to have been a fly on the wall to those remarkable years, to hear those witty conversations and see the flirtations and smell the amazing food.”
“The Adventures of Mary Darling” by Pat Murphy
Tachyon Publications, 396 pages, $18.95, May 6, 2025
Pat Murphy, former head science writer at the Exploratorium, is an acclaimed author of science fiction and fantasy about women who defy and subvert societies’ expectations. Her books include “The Falling Woman” (winner of the Nebula Award for novel), “Rachel in Love” (Nebula Award winner for Novella), “Points of Departure” (short story collection, winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), and “Bones” (winner of the World Fantasy Award for Novella). Her new book is “The Adventures of Mary Darling,” which she calls an “historic fantasy mashup of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes with a feminist twist.” Mary Darling is the mother of the children who flew away with Peter Pan and the niece of Sherlock Holmes’ pal Dr. Watson. She’s also the populist hero the Victorian era never knew it needed. Library Journal’s review said, “Mary’s story is a dangerous and delightful adventure that turns the bigotry and misogyny of Victorian England on its head,” while “The Jane Austen Book Club” author Karen Joy Fowler said, it’s “a book that upends, complicates, situates and explicates the stories we have always known. Full of surprises and deeply satisfying. Danger ahead! Also fun!”
“The Lost Queen” by Aimee Phan
G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 368 pages, $19.99, May 6, 2025
Aimee Phan, a Berkeley resident, writing and literature professor at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, is the author of “The Reeducation of Cherry Truong,” a novel story spanning three generations of two Vietnamese families living on three continents; and “We Should Never Leave,” a collection of linked short stories inspired by Operation Babylift, the evacuation of 2,000 Vietnamese orphans right before the fall of Saigon. “The Lost Queen,” her first work for young adults, is a fantasy about California high school girls who have special powers, a magical friendship and ties to ancient Vietnamese goddesses. The first of a two-book series, “The Lost Queen,” according to “The Walls Around Us” young adult author Nova Ren Suma, is a “fearlessly told epic tale with a gleaming modern edge.”
“Fallout” by Jordan Rosenfeld
Running Wild Press, 274 pages, $21.99, May 25, 2025
The South Bay editor, writing coach and author “How to Write a Page Turner” details the adventures of an investigative journalist, a new mother who suffers a tragedy, in her novel “Fallout.” In the eco-thriller, the reporter has encounters with a group of female anarchists who want to destroy dirty energy companies, as well as the wife of the magnate who heads the company that’s the main target of the activists. Both women are faced with a difficult moral choice: Do they do the right thing, or disrupt their own personal life? In addition to exploring themes of environmental activism and justice, the book addresses the tough choices that women must make about balancing career and family. Laura Bogart, author of “Don’t You Know I Love You?,” called “Fallout” an “equal blend of propulsion and pathos” and a “page turner with a blistering heart and a powerful sense of purpose,” adding “Rosenfeld seamlessly weaves motherhood, grief, environmentalism, family tragedy and hopefulness into a story of redemption.”
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