Looking for a book to keep you company this winter?
Whether your reading nook happens to be by a fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate or in a busy airport navigating hectic holiday travel, UC authors have you covered this year, with award-winning books spanning literary fiction, memoir, fantasy, nonfiction and poetry alike (with stories for young adults and children, too).
Dive into some of the year’s most critically acclaimed works, including National Book Award winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, New York Times bestsellers and Oprah picks, all from UC alums or faculty, below.
Fiction
“Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner (UC Berkeley)
The recipient of rave reviews — and shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize — “Creation Lake” by UC Berkeley alum Rachel Kushner follows a UC Berkeley Ph.D. dropout and spy-for-hire posing as an anarchist who becomes intellectually enchanted with the leader of the group she has infiltrated. Dwight Garner of The New York Times hailed the book as cementing Kushner’s reputation as one of the finest novelists in the English language and remarked “You know from this book’s opening paragraphs that you are in the hands of a major writer, one who processes experience on a deep level.”
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Creation-Lake/Rachel-Kushner/9781982116521
“All Fours” by Miranda July (UC Santa Cruz)
Filmmaker, author, and one-time UC Santa Cruz student Miranda July returns to the novel after the success of “The First Bad Man” in 2015 with “All Fours,” a tale of a 45-year-old, perimenopausal semi-famous artist who takes a detour on a cross-country drive to experience a sexual awakening. Lurid, hilarious, and insightful, “All Fours” has received acclaim from all corners and has been shortlisted for the 2024 National Book Award.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/639464/all-fours-by-miranda-july/
“Colored Television” by Danzy Senna (UC Irvine)
A UC Irvine Master of Fine Arts graduate, Danzy Senna’s work explores gender, race and identity in America, often through the lens of multiracial characters. Her most recent book, “Colored Television,” features Jane, a biracial novelist, tempted away from working on a “mulatto ‘War and Peace’” to housesit at a wealthy television writer’s house. From this temporarily luxurious vantage point, Jane contemplates how different her life could be if she funneled her efforts away from novels and into “the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies” in a manner by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and incisive. This bestselling novel was named a “Top 10 Book of the Year” by The Washington Post and one of The New York Times’ “Notable Books of 2024.”
“Indian Winter” by Kazim Ali (UC San Diego)
A professor of literature and creative writing at UC San Diego, Kazim Ali has published poetry, fiction, nonfiction and translations for two decades, founding the influential nonprofit literary press Nightboat Books along the way. His most recent work is “Indian Winter,” a novel whose protagonist, a queer author, departs for India and attempts to process the death of someone with whom he had a relationship long ago. “I have to get away from this small town and all its dangers,” the narrator explains, “to write, read, think, all the most important things in the world but which are thought the least important, the most expendable."
https://chbooks.com/Books/I/Indian-Winter
Fantasy / Science Fiction
“The Black Bird Oracle” by Deborah Harkness (UC Davis)
If you’re thinking about picking up this book for a “Harry Potter” fan in your life, the bad news is they might already have it. UC Davis alum and USC history professor Deborah Harkness has captured imaginations worldwide with her “All Souls” series. The first volume, “A Discovery of Witches,” became a New York Times bestseller and the basis for a popular Netflix show. “The Black Bird Oracle,” the fifth installment of the series, follows Oxford scholar and witch Diana Bishop and her vampire geneticist husband as they reckon with passing magical abilities to their children and confront the past. It’s another thrilling New York Times bestseller from a fantasy master.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738235/the-black-bird-oracle-by-deborah-harkness/
“Freeset” by Sarina Dahlan (UC San Diego)
Readers who enjoy speculative science fiction will be drawn into the third installment of Sarina Dahlan’s trilogy, which includes prior volumes “Reset” and “Preset.” In this Amazon best-selling science fiction romance series, individuals’ memories are erased every four years to help society cope with humanity’s capacity for destruction. Still, some of the same people continue to be drawn to one another, and may even be able to recover lost memories, if only they can locate where they are stored. An imaginative take on freedom, love and the human condition.
https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/products/book-fwxz
Memoir
“The Many Lives of Mama Love” by Lara Love Hardin (UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine)
In addition to her role as a bestselling author, Lara Love Hardin has been a ghostwriter and a successful literary agent, having attended UC Santa Cruz as the first in her family to go to college after a traumatic childhood (she later earned an MFA from UC Irvine). But Hardin took a long road to her literary achievements, one involving fraud, drug addiction, and a stint in jail. Hardin’s story of recovery and redemption is told in her memoir “The Many Lives of Mama Love,” which takes its name from a nickname she earned while incarcerated. Subtitled “A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing” her book made it onto the Oprah’s Book Club list in 2024 and became a New York Times bestseller.
“Consent” by Jill Ciment (UC Irvine)
A UC Irvine MFA alum, now a professor of English at the University of Florida, Jill Ciment is a memoirist and novelist whose novel “Heroic Measures” was a finalist for the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her latest project, “Consent,” is a memoir with a twist — it revisits her marriage to artist Arnold Mesches, already lovingly documented in an earlier memoir, “Half a Life.” This time she questions the past through the lens of MeToo and social change — what did it mean, or does it mean, to have met one’s husband at the age of 16 when he was your teacher, and to wed a year later when he was 47, and she 17? Was her narrative of herself as the pursuer actually true? How does one’s sense of self change as the world changes? Filled with evocative prose and thoughtful questions, “Consent” was named a “Must Read Book of the Year” by Time magazine.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738057/consent-by-jill-ciment/
“Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World” by Rae Wynn Grant (UC Santa Barbara)
UC Santa Barbara ecologist Rae Wynn Grant may not have seen herself reflected in the rugged white male adventurers crisscrossing the globe on TV as a child, but that didn’t stop her from following her dreams to become one of the few Black woman scientists in her field. A National Geographic Society fellow, Grant has visited some of the most remote locales on Earth and shares her astonishing journeys in a new memoir. Called “a poignant exploration of the natural world,” by O Magazine, “Wild Life” is a call to the inner adventurer in all of us and a reclamation of science and field work for everyone.
https://zandoprojects.com/books/wildlife/
Non-Fiction
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling” by Jason De León (UCLA)
Jason De León, a UCLA professor of anthropology and Chicana/o Studies, won the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction for this stunning expose of human trafficking and the lives of smugglers who help people cross the border. To understand this world, from its gang leaders to its low-level guides, De León embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years. “It all started with this kid who said to me, ‘How come no one listens to us?’” De León said this fall at the awards ceremony. His book gives voice to those living through the harrowing realities of this extralegal, billion-dollar industry.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/672038/soldiers-and-kings-by-jason-de-leon/
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-jason-de-leon-wins-2024-national-book-award-for-nonfiction
“Freedom to Win” by Ethan Scheiner (UC Davis)
Readers may be familiar with the “Miracle on Ice,” — the shocking 1980 Olympic upset by a ragtag U.S. Men’s Olympic hockey team over the strongly favored Soviet Union team during the Winter Games in in Lake Placid, New York. UC Davis professor Ethan Scheiner recounts an even more dramatic drama that played out on the ice in his book “Freedom to Win.” It chronicles the story of how the Czechoslovakia hockey team vanquished the Soviet Union in 1969 not once, but twice — unleashing nearly half a million joyous protestors against the Soviet regime. Scheiner’s book captures the tension of life under Soviet rule and the joy and social change sports can inspire.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Freedom-to-Win/Ethan-Scheiner/9781639363513
“Learning to Lead: Undocumented Students Mobilizing Education,” by Jennifer R. Nájera (UC Riverside)
For undocumented students, the path through higher education is rocky and frequently changing. Yet these students often persist, becoming leaders in their communities and advocates for themselves and their peers. “I wrote ‘Learning to Lead’ because of the undocumented students I was meeting in my classroom, students who had stories that I did not feel were being captured in the books we were reading,” said Nájera, an associate professor of ethnic studies at UC Riverside. Her book, the result of five years of research, highlights the resources available to undocumented students as well as their remarkable resilience in the face of frequent obstacles and threats.
https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/3416/Learning-to-LeadUndocumented-Students-Mobilizing
“A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy” by Nathan Thrall (UC Santa Barbara)
On a highway outside Jersualem, a school bus full of Palestinian children crashes. A nightmare for any parent, but the tragedy is immediately compounded when security restrictions delay rescue teams from coming to the children’s aid. Thrall, a UC Santa Barbara creative writing alum, was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for his book“ A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy,” which shares the story of a father whose son died in the crash, offering a harrowing and humanizing window into the real-life experiences of life under Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
https://www.nathanthrall.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-abed-salama-us
“Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters” by Charan Ranganath (UC Davis)
What makes us remember a question on Jeopardy but forget the name of a former colleague? What we recall and what fades away can often be baffling. In his New York Times bestselling book, UC Davis professor Charan Ranganath shines a light on the latest science into how and why memory works the way it does — and how we can use those insights to remember the things we want to remember and come to grips with the fact of forgetting.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705542/why-we-remember-by-charan-ranganath-phd/
“Tripping on Utopia” by Benjamin Breen (UC Santa Cruz)
Saving the world is not just a preoccupation of superheroes — it was also an obsession of Margaret Mead, the famous 20th-century anthropologist. In the mid-50s, she was particularly fascinated by psychedelics as a possible path to utopia particularly LSD. That fact prompted the guiding question that animates UC Santa Cruz historian Breen’s book: what would our world look like if the study of psychedelics had been embraced instead of suppressed? Funded instead of federally criminalized? With books like UC Berkeley author Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” topping New York Times bestseller lists, interest in psychedelics has never been more mainstream. Breen’s book, praised as “One of the Best Books of 2024 So Far” by the New Yorker, is an intriguing look at what might have been.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/benjamin-breen/tripping-on-utopia/9781538722374/
“Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question” by Jade S. Sasser (UC Riverside)
Climate anxiety and anxiety about having children have increasingly begun to dovetail, but the conflict is often framed as an existential crisis of the privileged separate from other environmental and social justice issues. Jade S. Sasser, a professor of gender and sexuality studies, decided to write about climate anxiety and “the kid question” after seeing her own students, many of whom are from low-income or immigrant backgrounds, express anxiety about jobs, social mobility and health. Sasser reframes the phenomenon, producing the first book-length examination of how present-day anxiety about having children is affected by historical legacies of race and concerns about climate justice. Offering a fresh approach to an emerging issue, Sasser’s book has sparked conversation across the media landscape about how deeply concerns about climate are enmeshed in people’s lives.
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/climate-anxiety-and-the-kid-question/paper
“Asian American Fiction After 1965: Transnational Fantasies of Economic Mobility” by Christopher T. Fan (UC Irvine)
Fans of Ted Chiang, Ruth Ozeki, Charles Yu (a UC Berkeley alum and National Book Award winner!) and other contemporary Asian American writers will enjoy diving into UC Irvine professor and Hyphen magazine cofounder Christopher T. Fan’s new book, a study of how Asian American fiction explores tensions of class and race across regions, intergenerational conflict, and the push and pull between the arts and technology. A groundbreaking book about what makes texts and authors Asian American.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/asian-american-fiction-after-1965/9780231213233
Poetry
“Tripas” by Brandon Som (UC San Diego)
Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, UC San Diego professor of literature Brandon Som’s “Tripas” is an exploration of his dual Chinese and Mexican heritage that celebrates the voices and lives of his multicultural, multigenerational childhood home. Characters include his Chicana grandmother, who spent her nights working on the Motorola assembly line, and his Chinese American father and grandparents, who ran the family corner store. “Tripas” addresses history, memoir, work, language and more, all with a deft lyrical voice.
https://ugapress.org/book/9780820363509/tripas/
“Brutal Companion” by Ruben Quesada (UC Riverside)
Drawing together grief, dreams, love and the lived realities faced by a Latinx queer man, “Brutal Companion” by UC Riverside alum Ruben Quesada is an intense, visceral and personal collection that walks with beauty and with brutality. It won the Barrow Street Editors Prize and follows upon the publication of his recent anthology, “Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry,” which won an Independent Publisher Book Award last year.
https://barrowstreet.org/press/product/brutal-companion-ruben-quesada/
Young Adult / Children’s
“Magnolia Wu Unfolds it All” by Chanel Miller (UC Santa Barbara)
An instant New York Times bestseller, UC Santa Barbara alum Chanel Miller’s children’s book “Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All” follows the adventures of Magnolia, a 10-year-old whose parents run a New York City laundromat. Eager to explore the world and return missing socks decoupled from their pairs, Magnolia and her new friend from California set off across the city to right the wrongs of the laundry world. Earning acclaim from The Today Show, NPR and many other outlets, Miller’s new book is perfect for middle-schoolers; her previous book, a memoir about the Brock Turner case, “Know My Name,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography while dealing with heavier themes of trauma, assault, and survival.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735878/magnolia-wu-unfolds-it-all-by-chanel-miller/
“Untraceable” by Aya de León (UC Berkeley)
Investigation and spy games are hallmarks of the Young Adult genre, as any fan of the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew knows, but rarely are kids of color the protagonists. In her follow-up to the award-winning “Undercover Latina,” UC Berkeley lecturer and director of Poetry for the People Aya de León returns to the exciting world of The Factory, an international organization of spies protecting people of color, through the lens of 15-year-old Amani Kendall, a girl trying to figure out why her family is on the run. Fast-paced and exciting, this prequel to “Undercover Latina” brings plenty of intrigue to the page, earning praise from School Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737628/untraceable-by-aya-de-leon/
Check out even more UC books here!
UC Berkeley: Holiday gift guide 2024 — New books by UC Berkeley authors
