This astounding collection of 400 personal stories written by residents and visitors captures the unique culture and community of Pacific Grove. From memories about the townsfolk’s reaction to WW II, growing up in the decades after, and how residents and visitors alike live, play, and work, the volume shares the seaside town’s neighborly spirit, love of nature, and sense of community only found in small towns. The collection was conceived and produced with the help of the entire town and spearheaded by Patricia Hamilton and her team of personal history and memoir professionals. This book is the first in the Life in Pacific Grove Trilogy, created to build community spirit.

The second book of Life in Pacific Grove, California makes deeper connections to our community through essays and personal stories by local authors. Like the Butterfly Effect—the idea that seemingly small and insignificant actions taken by one person can have a profound effect globally—the sharing of these stories can have a long-lasting ripple effect on our community and outward. From the history of local events such as Good Old Days and Feast of Lanterns, a look at the city in the 1970s, and how Pacific Grove has become a haven for writers seeking inspiration, this volume illustrates how the seaside town continues to transform to bring joyful memories for visitors and residents alike.

When “Presto” Kane, freelance writer, former newspaper reporter, and part-time researcher in Pacific Grove, is assigned to ferret out background information on the upcoming auction of a legendary gem, it all seems part of a normal day’s work—until a young woman turns up dead in Presto’s shower and he’s the prime suspect. He takes at least one good turn around the Monterey Peninsula to track down and corral the killer.

A Humorous History Book! LIGHTHOUSE: A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a light… And a friend of a politician. … according to A. Bierce’s Devils Dictionary. SO YOU WANT TO BECOME A LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER? Had any experience with things nautical? Need 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep? … Able to fix lamps and mechanical devices in the dark? Need to regularly meet new and interesting people? EVEN IF YOU MET THESE REQUIREMENTS YOU WOULD NOT BE QUALIFIED TO BECOME A LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER IN 19th CENTURY AMERICA.

In this exuberant record of Barbara Mossberg engaging audiences from California to Finland, you will find poems, stories, memoir, humor, elegies, celebrations, travel narratives, rollicking speeches, nature rapture, literary tributes, cooking instructions, and love songs, among other riches. You will encounter mountains and mountain lions, rivers and herons, lost loved ones and found miracles. In her company, you will experience, as she does, moments “when the Universe will reveal itself … as something generous and good, some whiff of passing grace.” The aroma of wonder rises from every page. —Scott R. Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination

Discover Pacific Grove in a delightful new way—on foot! In these pages, we’ll explore walks, hikes, and rambles taking you along the shoreline bluffs overlooking Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean and into our wild and woodsy urban forests. Each hike comes complete with a map and is lavishly illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings by Pacific Grove artist Judy Obbink. Whether a long-time resident or first-time visitor, daily power walker or weekend warrior, you’re sure to find something to intrigue, inform, inspire and enchant in Pacific Grove at Your Feet.

At one time, it was the biggest department store between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with orders pouring in from all over the nation. John Steinbeck immortalized it in the pages of Cannery Row. And it all happened in a quiet village on the California coast. Step into the legendary Holman’s Department Store and meet its remarkable owner, Wilford Rensselaer Holman, in My Life in Pacific Grove. Follow Mr. Holman from his arrival in Pacific Grove as a small boy in 1888, through his years of transforming his father’s modest dry-goods store into a local retail giant, to his final triumph with the dedication of the W.R. Holman Highway in 1972.

William Minor and his family moved to Pacific Grove in the 1970s—thereby began a beautiful love story in the first place from where he never wished to move. He began to write poetry as a graduate student in Language Arts at San Francisco State (1963), and in Monterey became a local jazz chronicler during the Monterey Pop days. This is his seventh book containing poems and woodcut prints of his earliest years in Pacific Grove, the most populated hippie colony between Haight Ashbury and Los Angeles.