The 10 Best California Books of 2023

But beneath the gleaming surface exists a ‘deafening river of melancholy roaring through the dark red cave of my heart.’”

“Death Valley,” by Melissa Broder

This novel follows a grieving narrator, who travels from Los Angeles to the edge of the Mojave Desert and tries to reconnect to the earth. From our review:

“‘Death Valley’ is a triumph, a ribald prayer for sensuality and grace in the face of profound loss, a hilarious revolt against the aggressive godlessness, dehumanization and fear plaguing our time.”

Nonfiction

“Daughter of the Dragon,” by Yunte Huang

This biography of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star, is intended as a form of reclamation and subversion. From our review:

“Hollywood was obsessed with the exoticism of Chinatown, yet roles for Asian actors were exceedingly few; it’s therefore all the more remarkable that Wong, who was born in her father’s Los Angeles laundry in 1905, was as productive as she was.”

“The Longest Minute,” by Matthew J. Davenport; and “Portal,” by John King

These books cover San Francisco’s resiliency, with one focused on how the city recovered from the 1906 earthquake and fire and the other using the iconic Ferry Building as a way to chart the city’s zigzagging trajectory. From our review:

“San Francisco has become a political hockey puck, slapped around with little regard for its actual qualities. Two very engaging new books attempt to give the city its due, presenting it not as an abstraction but as a place — albeit a very dramatic one, swinging precipitously between crisis and rebirth.”

“A Man of Two Faces,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Nguyen, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer,” blends polemic and family history in this fragmentary memoir about growing up in San Jose. From our review:

“In the relative comfort of San Jose, where Nguyen has ‘everything I need but almost nothing I want,’ he learns that the secret to surviving a bifurcated upbringing is … keeping secrets, including his high school girlfriend, J, a Filipina refugee who lives three hours away and drains his comic book collection in long-distance phone bills. ‘In Ba Ma’s house,’ he writes, ‘you are an American spying on them. Outside their house, you are a Vietnamese spying on Americans and their strange ways and customs.’”