As the year comes to an end, we're taking a look back at some our top picks from 2018 that either showcase the people, history and culture that define the area or were written by local award-winning/best-selling authors.

These are books released over the past 18 months that are available online at Amazon.com or at Books Inc., Kepler's Books or Stanford Bookstore.

BUSINESS

"Leading Matters: Lessons from my Journey," John L. Hennessy, Stanford University Press, 200 pages

Former Stanford University president Dr. John Hennessy reflects on lessons learned from decades of leading and serving some of world's most influential organizations. Hennessy, who currently is the chair of the Board of Google's parent company, Alphabet, and Director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, co-founded the semiconductor company MIPS Computer Systems and is a recipient of the prestigious Turing award, considered the Nobel Prize of the computing industry. Each chapter of his book looks at elements that have shaped his career, including humility, trust and courage.

CRIME

"Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup," John Carreyrou, Alfred A. Knopf, 352 pages

Investigative journalist John Carreyrou tells step-by-step the chilling story of how the multi-billion-dollar biotech scandal at Palo Alto startup Theranos unfolded and ultimately led to the federal indictment of its founder and C.E.O. Elizabeth Holmes and chief operating officer Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. Both were charged for an alleged scheme to defraud investors, doctors and patients. Though a true story, the book has the elements of a fictional thriller: stalking by private investigators; ambushes; suicide by an employee; and lawsuits that left people financially ruined. The book made the New York Times' best-sellers list for nonfiction, and a movie adaptation starring Jennifer Lawrence is in the works.

FICTION

"The Night Trade," Barry Eisler, Thomas & Mercer, 320 pages

Mountain View resident Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position with the CIA's Directorate of Operations, then worked as a technology lawyer and startup executive in Silicon Valley and Japan before launching his John Rain espionage thriller series that made him a New York Times best-selling author. At the start of 2018, the crime writer released "The Night Trade," the second volume from his Livia Lone detective series. Lone, who works for a government anti-trafficking task force is given the chance to return to Thailand to ferret out Rithisak Sorm, the kingpin behind her own childhood ordeal. Eisler is set to release the third volume in the series, "The Killer Collective," in January 2019.

"Sophia of Silicon Valley," Anna Yen, HarperCollins, 368 pages

Local entreprenuer Anna Yen provides a sharp and humorous insider's perspective of Silicon Valley's tech world in her debut novel, which chronicle's a woman's journey storming the corridors of geek power and living in the shadow of its outrageous cast of high-maintenance maestros. The satirical novel, based on the author's own experiences during the most innovative times of Silicon Valley, provides an uncensored and entertaining insight into the world of tech and what it takes to survive. Yen has worked at a wide range of tech companies, including Tesla Motors and Pixar Animations Studios, and has co-founded several tech startups.

"The Storyteller's Secret,"

Sejal Badani, Lake Union Publishing, 412 pages

Sejal Badani, a Palo Alto resident and the best-selling author of "Trail of Broken Wings," follows two generations of women from 1930s British-occupied India to present-day in her new historical novel "The Storyteller's Secret," which is based on the tragic life of her own grandmother. The story begins with Jaya. As she suffers from her third miscarriage and the collapse of her marriage, she gets word that her mother's father is dying. Having never met him or ever gone to India, Jaya desperately hopes to escape her pain and also desires a chance to understand her emotionally distant mother and learn about the past she has always been kept from. The book reached No. 1 on the Amazon Bestseller lists for Kindle, Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction, Literary, Family Life and Cultural Heritage.

HISTORY

"Images of America: Hoover Tower at Stanford University," Elena S. Danielson, Acadia Publishing, 128 pages

Elena S. Danielson, who worked as an archivist in the Hoover Institution Library and Archives for 27 years, compiled a collection of historic photos to document the history of the 285-foot-tall Art Deco-style tower that former U.S. President Herbert Hoover built on the Stanford University campus in 1941 to house his vast collection of documents on international relations, global economics, war, revolution and peace. Hoover was a member of Stanford's first class of students in 1891. He hired Arthur Brown Jr. to design the library building, which was dedicated to promote peace in the world.

"We Shot the War: Overseas Weekly in Vietnam," Lisa Nguyen (editor), Hoover Institution Press , 224 pages

This book examines the legacy of one of the most popular and eccentric newspapers to cover the Vietnam War. Founded by Stanford University graduates Cecil and Marion von Rospach during the 1950s, the Overseas Weekly was beloved by the troops and reviled by the Pentagon for its controversial content. The Weekly was temporarily banned from the military post exchange (PX) newsstands by irate commanders. Through photos and short passages, the book depicts a broad array of combat experiences, including the sanguine moments of war and the humanity that emerged from chaos.

"Hollywood Spies,The Undercover Surveillance of Nazis in Los Angeles," Laura B. Rosenzweig, New York University Press, 320 pages

Palo Alto author Laura B. Rosenzweig examines how the Los Angeles Jewish community, financed by Jewish moguls in Hollywood, sent undercover agents to infiltrate and investigate Nazi groups operating in Los Angeles in the 1930s. The nonfiction book was a finalist in the National Jewish Book Awards, American Jewish Studies category. Rosenzweig earned an master's degree in education from Stanford University and a PhD in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She taught U.S. history and American Jewish history at UC Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University.

MEMOIRS

"Short Hair Detention: Memoir of a thirteen-year-old Girl Surviving the Cambodian Genocide,"Channy Chhi Laux, Archway Publishing, 574 pages

Silicon Valley engineer Channy Chhi Laux recounts her life as a teen in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge Communist regime. Her fight for survival started at age 13 when she woke up to the sound of gunfire from the Khmer Rouge that invaded her family's hometown in 1975 and went on to kill an estimated 2 million Cambodians during its reign. She and her family had braced themselves for that moment but nothing prepared her for the next four years of sickness, constant separation from her family and the fear of and sometimes longing for death in the harsh living conditions of the labor camps, where she was forced to work.

"Small Fry," Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Grove Atlantic, 400 pages

Lisa Brennan-Jobs sheds light on her years of attempting to understand her father, iconic Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, in his role as a reluctant and capricious parent, occasionally loving and often cruel. Brennan-Jobs gives multidimensionality to everyone she writes about. She's mostly kind to her step-mother, Laurene Powell, and adores her half-brother, Reed. (Jobs' and Powell's two daughters, Eve and Erin, are barely mentioned.) Total inclusion in the family, however, seems impossible for Brennan-Jobs. The memoir reveals Brennan-Jobs as a survivor of a particularly difficult childhood with a unique story to tell as she shares her narrative from its very beginning on a farm in Oregon where she is born to Jobs' girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, all the way to the end when she stands by her father's deathbed in Palo Alto.

"Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen," Jose Antonio Vargas, Dey Street Books, 256 pages

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas has dealt with labels his entire life -- whether that be as a gay man, a journalist, a Filipino or an immigrant. But the label that prompted him to become a vocal advocate for immigrant rights is "undocumented citizen." The former Mountain View resident details his experience growing up on the Midpeninsula believing that he was a permanent U.S. resident, only to discover in his mid-teens that he was an undocumented immigrant who was smuggled into the country illegally by his grandparents. In the book, Vargas gives readers unprecedented access into his life. He describes his early years living in Mountain View with his grandparents and extended family as a typical kid, attending Crittenden Middle School and Mountain View High School and interning at the Mountain View Voice.

SOCIAL SCIENCE

"The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love," Marilyn Yalom, Basic Books, 240 pages

Marilyn Yalom, award-winning author and senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, explores the cultural history behind the heart. Yalom said she was inspired to investigate the heart as a visual icon during a visit to an exhibition of medieval artifacts at the British Museum, where a brooch in the classic scalloped heart shape caught her eye. In her book, she explores how language has held on to the heart as the home of love long after society has learned that it's really the brain that is the center of emotions. Her book offers examples of ubiquitous phrases such as "broken-hearted" and "wearing one's heart on one's sleeve."