The modern story begins at the time when the world famous Pro-Am golf tournament is played at Pebble Beach, California. Rita Minetti, eighth generation Californian, is enmeshed in a mysterious burglary of her antique bookshop in Pebble Beach. The pivotal part of the burglary is the disappearance of family diaries, written in Spanish, by Clarita de Segovia, born in Alta California. Clarita, age fifteen, began writing a diary during her sequestered days before her marriage to a man she had never met. She continued writing dairies during a tumultuous time in California history. The American Conquest and The Gold Rush. Her granddaughter, Isabel, brings the story to the twentieth century by writing more about Clarita and her descendents in her own journals. An ambitious Monterey County Sheriff is eager to question Rita, her friends, and her family, while Rita believes she can solve the mystery by herself. She is torn between the quest of finding the diaries, protecting the family prestige, and pursuing her goal of selling Claritia's story to a television production company.

An Architectural Guidebook to San Francisco and the Bay Area is the definitive guide to the history and architecture of the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties. This compendium has been written and photographed by Susan Cerny and twelve Bay Area experts and provides a historic record of how the area developed to became what it is today, and discusses transportation systems, city and suburban landscape plans, public parkland, California history, and economic, social, and political influences. Included are San Francisco Victorians, civic buildings, churches, parks, grand Period Revivals, and rustic Arts and Crafts homes, as well as significant vernacular buildings in less publicized neighborhoods and towns. Features include: Buildings by all major San Francisco Bay Area architects from the 1860s to the present. More than 2,000 entries. Architectural landmarks in every Bay Area county, arranged by chapter: San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, and Marin. More than 100 cities, towns, and neighborhoods. A history of architectural styles popular in the Bay Area. More than 20,000 copies sold of our previous architecture guide to the Bay Area.

This is the world premiere complete publication of Narciso Botellos important Annals of Southern California, a work focusing on the years 1833 - 1847 when California was emerging from its years of isolation and seclusion with dramatic turmoil, social change, political intrigues, and armed conflicts. Botello, living in that dusty pueblo Los Angeles, records a swirl of events and personalitiestragic love, crime, warfare, treachery, invasionall bound together by the characteristic bravado and intricate web of loyalties of the native Californios. This spirited English translation of the original, amplified by detailed notes and insightful commentary, draws the reader deep into the surprising events of the turbulent final years of Mexican California.