City Lights is a landmark general bookstore, internationally known for our expert selection of titles and our commitment to free intellectual inquiry.
Founded in 1953 as the nation’s first all-paperback bookstore, we now offer both hardcovers and paperbacks from all of the major publishing houses, along with an impressive range of titles from smaller, specialty publishers. Our shop features an extensive selection of poetry, fiction, translations, politics, history, philosophy, music, spirituality, and more, with a staff whose special interests in many fields contribute to the hand-picked quality of what you see on the shelves.
New Releases
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Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk
Sasha Lapointe $25.00 Add to cart -
Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand
John Markoff $32.00 Add to cart -
Rebel Speak: A Justice Movement Mixtapevolume 2
Bryonn Rolly Bain $24.95 Add to cart -
America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice
Treva B Lindsey $24.95 Add to cart -
Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments
Erin L Thompson $25.95 Add to cart -
Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds
Thomas Halliday $28.99 Add to cart -
Moon Witch, Spider King
Marlon James $30.00 Add to cart -
The Fifties: An Underground History
James R Gaines $28.00 Add to cart -
You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays
Zora Neale Hurston $29.99 Add to cart -
Worn: A People’s History of Clothing
Sofi Thanhauser $30.00 Add to cart -
Beasts of a Little Land
Juhea Kim $27.99 Add to cart -
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
David Graeber $35.00 Add to cart -
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
Nikole Hannah-Jones $38.00 Add to cart -
Hella Town: Oakland’s History of Development and Disruption
Mitchell Schwarzer $26.95 Add to cart -
In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism
J P Daughton $30.00 Add to cart
Events
Wednesday, May 18, 2022, 6:00 pm PST
Gabriela Alemán in conversation with Oscar Villalon
City Lights in conjunction with Zyzzyva celebrate the publication of Family Album: Stories, published by City Lights Books, Ecuadorian author Gabriela Alemán’s rollicking follow-up to her acclaimed English-language debut,Poso Wells.
Virtual
Event
Event
Staff Picks
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Pure Colour
Sheila Heti $26.00 Add to cart -
Olga Dies Dreaming
Xochitl Gonzalez $27.99 Add to cart -
Manywhere: Stories
Morgan Thomas $26.00 Add to cart -
A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce
Massimo Montanari $18.00 Add to cart -
Cruel Fiction
Wendy Trevino $16.00 Add to cart -
Bee Reaved
Dodie Bellamy $17.95 Add to cart -
We Run the Tides
Vendela Vida $16.99 Add to cart -
Goodbye, Vitamin
Rachel Khong $16.00 Add to cart -
Detransition, Baby
Torrey Peters $18.00 Add to cart -
Grievers
Adrienne Maree Brown $15.00 Add to cart -
Laserwriter II
Tamara Shopsin $26.00 Add to cart -
Matrix
Lauren Groff $28.00 Add to cart -
The History of Bones: A Memoir
John Lurie $28.00 Add to cart -
Model Citizen: A Memoir
Joshua Mohr $27.00 Add to cart -
In the Country of Others
Leila Slimani $26.00 Add to cart -
Honey Mine: Collected Stories
Camille Roy $17.95 Add to cart -
The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club
Doug Henderson $16.00 Add to cart -
Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover
Annie Sprinkle $29.95 Add to cart -
Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar $16.99 Add to cart -
Transversal: Poems
Urayoán Noel $16.95 Add to cart -
In Still Rooms
Constantine Jones $18.00 Add to cart -
I Am, Am I, to Trust the Joy That Joy Is No More or Less There Now Than Before
Evan Kennedy $18.95 Add to cart -
Creatures of Passage
Morowa Yejidé $25.00 Add to cart -
Dawn
Octavia E Butler $16.99 Add to cart -
Sarahland
Sam Cohen $24.00 Add to cart -
Double Trio: Tej Bet, So’s Notice, Nerve Church: Limited Edition Box Set
Nathaniel Mackey $65.00 Add to cart -
Collected Poems
Sonia Sanchez $29.95 Add to cart -
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories
Mariana Enriquez $27.00 Add to cart -
Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime
Alex Espinoza $21.99 Add to cart -
Erosion: Essays of Undoing
Terry Tempest Williams $18.00 Add to cart -
The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks
Terry Tempest Williams $20.00 Add to cart -
Assata: An Autobiography
Assata Shakur $18.95 Add to cart -
Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories
Samuel R Delany $17.95 Add to cart -
Exhalation
Ted Chiang $17.00 Add to cart -
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Jia Tolentino $18.00 Add to cart -
Finna: Poems
Nate Marshall $17.00 Add to cart -
Fever Dream
Samanta Schweblin $16.00 Add to cart -
The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories
Yukiko Motoya $16.95 Add to cart -
Where the Wild Ladies Are
Aoko Matsuda $16.95 Add to cart -
Birthday
César Aira $13.95 Add to cart -
Family and Borghesia
Natalia Ginzburg $14.95 Add to cart -
Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing 1977-1997
Kevin Killian $29.95 Add to cart -
Verge
Lidia Yuknavitch $16.00 Add to cart -
Intimations: Six Essays
Zadie Smith $10.95 Add to cart -
City of Night
John Rechy $18.00 Add to cart -
Essays and Fictions
Brad Phillips $16.95 Add to cart -
Sing to It: Stories
Amy Hempel $16.00 Add to cart -
Telephone
Percival Everett $16.00 Add to cart -
Dance on Saturday: Stories
Elwin Cotman $17.00 Add to cart -
Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography
Andrea Warner $18.95 Add to cart -
Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
Art Spiegelman $16.95 Add to cart -
Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History
Art Spiegelman $16.95 Add to cart -
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
Mikki Kendall $26.00 Add to cart -
Alienation and Freedom
Frantz Fanon $48.00 Add to cart -
Black Futures
Kimberly Drew $40.00 Add to cart -
Little Boy
Lawrence Ferlinghetti $24.00 Add to cart -
Piranesi
Susanna Clarke $27.00 Add to cart
Featured Titles
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The Hurting Kind
Ada Limón $22.00 Add to cart -
Against Heaven: Poems
Kemi Alabi $16.00 Add to cart -
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
Kim Fu $16.95 Add to cart -
Time Is a Mother
Ocean Vuong $24.00 Add to cart -
The Books of Jacob
Olga Tokarczuk $35.00 Add to cart -
All the Flowers Kneeling
Paul Tran $18.00 Add to cart -
Dirty Bird Blues
Clarence Major $18.00 Add to cart -
Ultramarine
Wayne Koestenbaum $19.95 Add to cart -
Customs: Poems
Solmaz Sharif $16.00 Add to cart -
Fear of Black Consciousness
Lewis R Gordon $28.00 Add to cart -
Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation
Reid Mitenbuler $18.00 Add to cart -
To Be a Man: Stories
Nicole Krauss $17.00 Add to cart -
Punks: New & Selected Poems
John Keene $20.00 Add to cart -
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
Sam Quinones $28.00 Add to cart -
The Days of Afrekete
Asali Solomon $26.00 Add to cart