From the Bay Area and beyond, this roundup of fall reading captures the latest from an Oakland cartoonist, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a tech industry expert and more. A stacked fall season for readers ...

Whenever people tell me stories about themselves, I voice the inevitable (for me) question: So, what’d you eat? To me, the trivial-seeming question is everything. What smells and textures did you ...

Calling all opera queens: San Francisco Opera is hosting its first ever Pride Concert. The celebration features the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Eun Sun Kim and Robert ...

Every great book is a gift in some way, an offering from author to reader in the form of knowledge, labor, entertainment, heart and wisdom. When considering books worth gifting for the upcoming ...

Reading Kate Christensen’s incisive eighth novel, a quote from 19th century author Ivan Turgenev came to mind: “A poet must be a psychologist.” As evidenced in her previous works (including 2008 ...

Beautiful books make classic gifts for a good reason. What better way to show you understand what delights, inspires or just plain occupies the minds of your loved ones than giving them a thoughtful ...

In the prologue to Safiya Sinclair’s astounding new memoir, she describes a turning point at the end of her turbulent teenage years in which she’s standing on the veranda of her family’s home in ...

If Anya’s memory, as she sings, is “glowing dim as an ember,” Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’ song somehow conjures that image’s musical equivalent. The melody in “Once Upon a December” smolders ...

Some people think they don’t like contemporary classical music. It’s daunting, it’s weird, it doesn’t have any memorable tunes. Then they hear a creation as magnificent and mind-blowingly original as ...

Bay Area author Betty Shamieh with a copy of her first novel, “Too Soon,” in her home workspace in Santa Clara. Photo: Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle If you’re at all involved in the theater scene, you may ...

Linda Gordon’s latest book, “Seven Social Movements That Changed America,” examines seven pivotal social movements, including the Montgomery bus boycott and the California farmworkers’… Historian ...

When you pick up a Bryan Washington novel, it’s best to know what you’re getting into. What you can expect right off the bat: graphic sex with acquaintances, partners and strangers (and then more of ...