California Stuff
Discover the dark, gritty, and psychological side of California with our curated book list. Featuring iconic LA crime fiction like James Ellroy's *The Black Dahlia* and *L.A. Confidential*, alongside Nathanael West's classic *Miss Lonelyhearts* and edgy novels by Michael Hemmingson, this collection dives deep into the Golden State's shadowy underbelly, twisted minds, and unforgettable characters.
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Miss Lonelyhearts
by Nathanael West
These two dark stories, and the most notable works of the short career of Nathanael West, remain stunningly powerful pieces of fiction more than 75 years after their original publication.
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This Other Eden
by Michael Hemmingson
Terrorism, crack cocaine and rape. Failure, miscarriages and suicide. Divorce, incest and misery. This Other Eden is Michael Hemmingson at his most brutal. A man wins the lottery and loses his family. A book agent must deal with a wild girl writer, a white trash genius and a limousine full of angry teenagers. His protagonists scratch at the bottom of society desperate to maintain delusions of adequacy. They fall into each other with hatred and bile; emerging with their own unique form of heroism. Provocative and intriguing, THIS OTHER EDEN by Michael Hemmingson is akin to reading a cross between someone's private journal and a True Crime magazine. Feeling titillated and naughty, as if reading a sibling's most private and dirty secrets, I found myself wholly unwilling to put this book down. It is glorious train wreck of loss, betrayal, and crime mixed with intimate thoughts and a poignant sense of loneliness. THIS OTHER EDEN is the kind of book that will make you forget your own life for a while but will also allow you to be grateful for it when you put the book down. Jennifer Brozek, Submissions Editor, Apex Book Company
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Zona Norte
by Michael Hemmingson
Zona Norte: The Post-Structural Body of Erotic Dancers and Sex Workers in Tijuana, San Diego and Los Angeles: An Auto/ethnography of Desire and Addiction started out as an ethnographic study of prostitution on both sides of the U.S./Mexican border and, as cultural anthropologist Michael Hemmingson explains, turned inward as a study of the self, or what is referred to as â oeauto/ethnographyâ in todayâ (TM)s lexicon of qualitative research. The author studies himself within the culture of the Other â "- he examines his feelings, memories, and reactions as he conducts his participant observations and interviews in the field, questioning why he chose to research erotic and exotic dancers, strippers, hookers, and various sex workers on both sides of an international border, revealing how the subjects are alike, and how they are different, and how they survive in their worlds. Auto/ethnography is one of the fastest growing and popular sub-fields in sociology, anthropology, and communications today. Books and anthologies are widely published, special journal issues appear each year on the subject, and there are an increasing number of dissertations in all fields of qualitative research cropping up from universities in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. Zona Norte is the latest contribution to this vibrant new approach to living the ethnographic life, as both a scholar and autobiographer.
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The Black Dahlia
by James Ellroy
On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a Los Angeles vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia-and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history.Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and rivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia-driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches-into a region of total madness.
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In the Heart of the Valley of Love
by Cynthia Kadohata
This novel explores human relationships in a Los Angeles of the future, where rich and poor are deeply polarized and where water, food, gas and education cannot be taken for granted.
