Here are 71 books that The Bold Dry Garden fans have personally recommended if you like The Bold Dry Garden. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Gardenista: The Definitive Guide to Stylish Outdoor Spaces

Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer Author Of Small Garden Style: A Design Guide for Outdoor Rooms and Containers

From my list on inspiring you to design your dream garden.

Why are we passionate about this?

We are garden designer Isa Hendry Eaton and lifestyle writer Jennifer Blaise Kramer, co-authors of Small Garden Style. We love getting and sharing inspiration on good garden design to pull our lives more outdoors. In our book, we show you how to use good design to create a joyful, elegant, and exciting yet compact outdoor living space for entertaining or relaxing. Our stylishly photographed guide is a fun way to create lush, layered, dramatic little gardens no matter the size of your available space, be it an urban patio, a tiny backyard, or even just a pot by your door.

Isa and Jennifer's book list on inspiring you to design your dream garden

Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer Why Isa and Jennifer loves this book

We love a garden book that works hard as a guide, and this book does just that!

It’s a handbook that feels like a trusted magazine with real-life garden tours and lifestyle tips such as “Steal This Look” (our fave!) for everything from stone and ironwork to plants and water features. We couldn’t appreciate more the way an author can break down a garden’s style and feel and help us replicate that look we love at home.

Gardenista is a go-to when we want a design refresh!

By Michele Slatalla ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Gardenista as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Our homes' outdoor spaces can and should be as welcoming and carefully considered as our living rooms; when treated as extensions of our homes, these spaces enrich our lives immeasurably. That was the guiding principle when, under the direction of editor in chief Michelle Slatalla (whose New York Times style columns were weekly must-reads for a decade), the team behind Remodelista.com launched sister site Gardenista.com. Like Remodelista, Gardenista caters to an older, more established audience (75 percent of readers are over the age of 35) and is known for its sophisticated, well-edited aesthetic. The book contains lushly photographed tours of…


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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Book cover of Designing with Succulents

Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer Author Of Small Garden Style: A Design Guide for Outdoor Rooms and Containers

From my list on inspiring you to design your dream garden.

Why are we passionate about this?

We are garden designer Isa Hendry Eaton and lifestyle writer Jennifer Blaise Kramer, co-authors of Small Garden Style. We love getting and sharing inspiration on good garden design to pull our lives more outdoors. In our book, we show you how to use good design to create a joyful, elegant, and exciting yet compact outdoor living space for entertaining or relaxing. Our stylishly photographed guide is a fun way to create lush, layered, dramatic little gardens no matter the size of your available space, be it an urban patio, a tiny backyard, or even just a pot by your door.

Isa and Jennifer's book list on inspiring you to design your dream garden

Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer Why Isa and Jennifer loves this book

As plant lovers who live in Santa Barbara, where succulents and aloes are ever-present, we love this book as it feels like a big authority on such a specific subject.

The book offers a crash course in choosing and planning succulents, and reading it makes even a novice feel like an expert. In addition to learning plant names and growing tips, Baldwin offers fun ideas like covering the top of a henhouse with low-maintenance plants.

Plus, the book is bursting with color, so every page is a visual thrill.

By Debra Lee Baldwin ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Designing with Succulents as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Designing with Succulents is inspiring, practical, and complete-a treasure for any gardener who loves these otherworldly beauties." -Kathleen N. Brenzel, Sunset Succulents offer dazzling possibilities and require very little maintenance to remain lush and alluring year-round. No one knows them better than the Queen of Succulents, Debra Lee Baldwin. This new, completely revised edition of her bestselling classic is a design compendium that is as practical as it is inspirational. Designing with Succulents shares design and cultivation basics, hundreds of succulent plant recommendations, and 50 companion plant profiles. Lavishly illustrated with 400 photographs, you'll find everything you need to visualize,…


Book cover of The Art of Outdoor Living: Gardens for Entertaining Family and Friends

Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer Author Of Small Garden Style: A Design Guide for Outdoor Rooms and Containers

From my list on inspiring you to design your dream garden.

Why are we passionate about this?

We are garden designer Isa Hendry Eaton and lifestyle writer Jennifer Blaise Kramer, co-authors of Small Garden Style. We love getting and sharing inspiration on good garden design to pull our lives more outdoors. In our book, we show you how to use good design to create a joyful, elegant, and exciting yet compact outdoor living space for entertaining or relaxing. Our stylishly photographed guide is a fun way to create lush, layered, dramatic little gardens no matter the size of your available space, be it an urban patio, a tiny backyard, or even just a pot by your door.

Isa and Jennifer's book list on inspiring you to design your dream garden

Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer Why Isa and Jennifer loves this book

It’s hard to find a good garden book that’s useful and yet gorgeous enough to keep on the coffee table. We found these two to be wildly true in The Art of Outdoor Living, which is stunning and aspirational, with full-page photos of outdoor spaces that have a dream-like quality.

We want to step into many of the book’s vignettes, from gravel courtyards to cozy fireplace pits to patios designed to perfection. Best of all, there are high to low tips, so while it reads aspirational, it also has an approachable quality to it, which makes us want to curl up with a cup of coffee by the outdoor fire pit we’re now suddenly dreaming up!

By Scott Shrader , Lisa Romerein (photographer) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Art of Outdoor Living as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Pools made private by lush plantings, bedrooms open to the back yard, bar seating by the outdoor oven. California native and exterior architect Scott Shrader is known for creating covetable outdoor rooms for clients including Ellen DeGeneres and Patrick Dempsey. In his first book, he shares the grounds of twelve beautiful properties, all designed to be lived in and enjoyed as extensions of the homes they surround, rich with creature comforts. Shrader shows us how to connect the landscape outside with interior decor; resulting in an exterior environment that flows naturally, stylishly and serenely from this core. He also inspires…


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Book cover of The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More: A Great Wharf Novel

The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More by Meredith Marple,

The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.

Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…

Book cover of Lotusland: A Botanical Garden Paradise

Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer Author Of Small Garden Style: A Design Guide for Outdoor Rooms and Containers

From my list on inspiring you to design your dream garden.

Why are we passionate about this?

We are garden designer Isa Hendry Eaton and lifestyle writer Jennifer Blaise Kramer, co-authors of Small Garden Style. We love getting and sharing inspiration on good garden design to pull our lives more outdoors. In our book, we show you how to use good design to create a joyful, elegant, and exciting yet compact outdoor living space for entertaining or relaxing. Our stylishly photographed guide is a fun way to create lush, layered, dramatic little gardens no matter the size of your available space, be it an urban patio, a tiny backyard, or even just a pot by your door.

Isa and Jennifer's book list on inspiring you to design your dream garden

Isa Hendry Eaton and Jennifer Blaise Kramer Why Isa and Jennifer loves this book

As longtime lovers of Lotusland, one of the country’s most stunning gardens that happens to be located in our own backyard, we love seeing its corners brought to life in this gorgeous book. Most of all, we love the stunning photography here by the talented Lisa Romerein, who magically captured this enchanted place we call Eden.

While we always look for written guides and tips when it comes to garden inspiration, this book pulls you in for its beauty, and it is impossible not to get transported in the pages.

By Marc Appleton , Lisa Romerein (photographer) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lotusland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Variously labelled Eden, one of the 100 gardens you must visit before your die, and among the 10 best botanical gardens in the world, Madame Ganna Walska s Lotusland is magic mixed with paradise in the hills of Montecito, California. Walska, a well-known Polish opera singer and socialite, purchased the estate in 1941 and spent 43 years creating Lotusland. The collections of exotic plants on the 37-acre property are an expression of her penchant for the dramatic, the unexpected, and the whimsical. Home to more than 3,400 types of plants, including at least 35,000 specimens, it is recognized not just…


Book cover of Beautiful Revolutionary

Judy Bebelaar Author Of And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown

From my list on Jonestown and Peoples Temple.

Why am I passionate about this?

I taught English and creative writing for 37 years in San Francisco, California. In 2018, Ron Cabral and I published And Then They Were Gone, which tells the story of the People’s Temple teenagers we taught. Many of them never returned after the Jonestown massacre and died there. We hope this story about our young students—their hopes, their poetry, their efforts to help make a better world—will bring some light to the dark story of Jonestown.

Judy's book list on Jonestown and Peoples Temple

Judy Bebelaar Why Judy loves this book

Woollett’s novel is based on much research on Peoples Temple and Jonestown. She came to the US from Australia for interviews with many survivors and others—including Ron Cabral and me because of our knowledge of the teenagers in the Temple. It’s a great read and adds much to the understanding of those who joined the Temple. Evelyn Lyndon (all the characters have fictional names except Jim Jones) is the “Beautiful Revolutionary” who, with her idealistic husband, joins the Temple and eventually becomes one of Jones’s mistresses. I recognize many of the book’s characters, sometimes two people rolled into one. Only in a novel could Woollett be in the minds of the characters she follows in this story, who are all believable and vividly drawn.

By Laura Elizabeth Woollett , Laura Elizabeth Woollett ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Beautiful Revolutionary as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The thrilling new novel, inspired by the events at Jonestown in the 1970s.

It's the summer of 1968, and Evelyn Lynden is a woman at war with herself. Minister's daughter. Atheist. Independent woman. Frustrated wife. Bitch with a bleeding heart.

Following her conscientious-objector husband Lenny to the rural Eden of Evergreen Valley, California, Evelyn wants to be happy with their new life. Yet she finds herself disillusioned with Lenny's passive ways - and anxious for a saviour. Enter the Reverend Jim Jones, the dynamic leader of a new revolutionary church ...

Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Beautiful Revolutionary explores the…


Book cover of Over Easy

Laura Catherine Brown Author Of Made by Mary

From my list on smart, sarcastic, funny-sad-angry women.

Why am I passionate about this?

My favorite books are funny/sad. In my own writing, I aspire for balance between satire and sympathy, going to dark places and shining a light of hilarity on them. I’m compelled by the psychological complexities of desire, particularly in female characters—flawed, average women, struggling for empowerment. For me, desire is inextricably bound with loss. I’m inspired by loss both superficial and profound, from misplaced keys to dying fathers. Many voices clamor in my head, vying for my attention. I’m interested in ambitious misfits, enraged neurotics, pagans, shamans, healers, dealers, grifters, and spiritual seekers who are forced to adapt, construct, reinvent and contort themselves as reality shifts around them.

Laura's book list on smart, sarcastic, funny-sad-angry women

Laura Catherine Brown Why Laura loves this book

Over Easy is the first part of Madge’s story, followed by The Customer is Always Wrong. They can be read separately as each stands on its own, but are best absorbed one after the other. These books are visually inventive and full of unforgettable characters who leap off the page and lodge in your imagination. The story follows Madge, an open-hearted artist who finds refuge and adventure in the wise-cracking, fast-talking, drug-taking world of the Imperial Café where she gets a job as a waitress after being denied financial aid to cover her last year in art school. Full of wit and pathos, Mimi Pond captures the perfect balance of hilarious and heartbreaking, all with fantastic drawings. She makes it look easy!

By Mimi Pond ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Over Easy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over Easy is a brilliant portrayal of a familiar coming-of-age story. After being denied financial aid to cover her last year of art school, Margaret finds salvation from the straight-laced world of college and the earnestness of both hippies and punks in the wisecracking, fast-talking, drug-taking group she encounters at the Imperial Cafe, where she makes the transformation from Margaret to Madge. At first she mimics these new and exotic grown-up friends, trying on the guise of adulthood with some awkward but funny stumbles. Gradually she realizes that the adults she looks up to are a mess of contradictions, misplaced…


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Book cover of That First Heady Burn

That First Heady Burn by George Bixley,

Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…

Book cover of Blood Sport: A Journey Up the Hassayampa

Blair Austin Author Of Dioramas

From my list on opening strange worlds.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a former librarian I have long been fascinated with Borges’s view of books: their metaphysical shape and their tendency to open into the uncanny and the infinite. Illness early in life drove me to books, to their particular isolation. Since then, I’ve found that worlds can open almost anywhere in literature by way of a mood, a patina of language, a vision, a set of images completely beyond the control of the writer. Now, I read these books to remind me of what fiction can do, the places it can go, the worlds it will open.

Blair's book list on opening strange worlds

Blair Austin Why Blair loves this book

I stumbled on this book in a free box outside a bookstore when I was a teenager and the family I had moved across the country to be with had collapsed.

My sisters and stepmother moved out of state, my brother moved to California, and my dad, after borrowing my student loan money for truck driving school, went over the road.

Bloodsport was rain-rippled—with a gigantic, dried fly smashed flat in the middle, sliding like a secret toy over the page.

An entire world opened up. I felt no less alone, but the experience changed my understanding of realism, the mythic, and the surreal: a book of immense oddness about a father and son journey up an apocalyptic river, toward Ratnose, the leader of a motorcycle gang.

By Robert F. Jones ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Blood Sport as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Welcome to the wilderness of masculinity, where anything goes-where women throw themselves unreservedly at men and games are played to the death. This is the outdoor paradise of the Hassayampa, a legendary river whose bank is overrun with prehistoric and mystical creatures prime for hunting and whose water is said to turn honest men into liars. Here a father takes his prepubescent son on an unforgettable adventure, a rite-of-passage quest that starts as an innocent fishing trip and soon turns into a bizarre Homeric journey.
In turn comic and brutal, Blood Sport is more than just the ultimate cult outdoor…


Book cover of Plants And Landscapes For Summer-dry Climates Of The San Francisco Bay Region

Pam Peirce Author Of Golden Gate Gardening,  The Complete Guide to Year-Round Food Gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area & Coastal California

From my list on California Mediterranean Gardening.

Why am I passionate about this?

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you know that its climate is unique in the U.S. and that there are many microclimates within the region. It’s all mediterranean, as you can tell by its dry summers and mild, wet winters. But near the coast, summer fog carpets the land for weeks and winter is rarely frosty, while inland summers are hot, winter frosts are frequent. I live here and use my academic and first-hand experience with plants to help regional gardeners create year-round beauty and harvests in all of our wonderful, often perplexing microclimates.

Pam's book list on California Mediterranean Gardening

Pam Peirce Why Pam loves this book

An introductory chapter describes our greater Bay Area climate and its microclimates. The plants listed are ones that will thrive in the region with a minimum of summer water. The glory of the book is in the photographs by Saxon Holt, which include close shots for identification and wider shots that will inspire you to combine plants handsomely in your garden. 

Book cover of Love and War in California

Jim Miller Author Of Drift

From my list on urban wandering and subterranean history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I teach literature, Labor Studies, and writing at San Diego City College and have written three San Diego-based novels: Drift, Flash, and Last Days in Ocean Beach, along with Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, a radical history of San Diego that I co-wrote with Mike Davis and Kelly Mayhew. Both as a writer and as a daily wanderer on the streets of San Diego, I have a passion for the psychogeography of the city space and a deep curiosity for and love of the people I encounter there.

Jim's book list on urban wandering and subterranean history

Jim Miller Why Jim loves this book

In this moving novel, the late great Oakley Hall took me back to World War II era San Diego. What I love about it is it paints a much fuller portrait of the lost city of old than he does in his first San Diego-based novel.

This book is filled with wonder, dread, love, and longing but what makes it noteworthy is its keen eye toward history and the darkness at the heart of the city’s streets and neighborhoods—and at the center of the war itself. 

By Oakley Hall ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Love and War in California as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Sweeping Novel of a Twentieth-Century California Life

Love and War in California tells the story, through the eyes of Payton Daltrey, of the last sixty years of an evolving America.
The award-winning author Oakley Hall begins his newest work in 1940s San Diego, where his endearing, wide-eyed narrator must define his identity in terms of self, family, and World War II. As his classmates disappear into the war one by one, he becomes obsessed with abuses of power and embroiled with the charming, dangerous Errol Flynn; with the Red Baiting of the American Legion; with the House Un-American Activities…


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Book cover of My Book Boyfriend

My Book Boyfriend by Kathy Strobos,

Lily loves her community garden. Rupert wants to bulldoze it. When feelings grow, will they blossom or turn to rubble?

"It literally had everything! - Bookworm Characters - Humor - Banter - Swoon-worthy lines."  - Book Reviewer.

Book cover of Scot Mist

Rob Osler Author Of Devil's Chew Toy

From my list on whodunits with highly entertaining amateur sleuths.

Why am I passionate about this?

My first book love was Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. The game between author and reader that centers a whodunit has always delighted me. The breadcrumb trail of clues, the misdirection, the inevitable I should have seen it! are my jam. Now an author of whodunits—I have one series published and a second on the way, along with several short stories – I read mysteries with greater scrutiny—in admiration and with a selfish desire to learn from other authors’ envious talents. Each of the books on my list excited me for their excellent storytelling. In the end, I found them just plain entertaining. I hope you do too!

Rob's book list on whodunits with highly entertaining amateur sleuths

Rob Osler Why Rob loves this book

A flat-out clinic on how to infuse humor in mystery! Author Catriona McPherson is hilarious, both in person and on the page.

I am continually amazed by her ability to create fully realized characters, like series star Lexy Campbell, who read so true on the page while being laugh-out-loud funny. Oh! And I also greatly admire the plotting of each terrific installment in this long-running Last Ditch Mystery series.

To me, the discovery of a top-notch series is a gift that keeps on giving. I hope this one keeps it up for a long time.

By Catriona McPherson ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Scot Mist as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Despite efforts to create a safe environment to see out the pandemic, the residents of the Last Ditch Motel face more dangers than they imagined possible in this hilarious yet claustrophobic mystery.

March 2020 and Operation Cocker is a go! The owners of the Last Ditch Motel, with a little help from their friend Lexy Campbell, are preparing to support one another through the oncoming lockdown, offering the motel's spare rooms to a select few from the local area in need of sanctuary.

While the newbies are settling in, an ambiguous banner appears demanding one of them return home. But…


Book cover of Gardenista: The Definitive Guide to Stylish Outdoor Spaces
Book cover of Designing with Succulents
Book cover of The Art of Outdoor Living: Gardens for Entertaining Family and Friends

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Interested in California, presidential biography, and Los Angeles?

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