Illustrations and text present the history, geography, people, politics and government, economy, and social life and customs of California, which is the most populous of the fifty states.

Since former Marine helicopter pilot Jack Morgan started Private, it has become one of the world's most powerful investigation firms, sought out by the rich and famous to discretely handle their most sensitive problems. Private's investigators are the smartest, the fastest, and the most technologically advanced in the world, and they always uncover the truth. When a former lover is found murdered in Jack's bed, he is instantly the number one suspect....

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

When eleven-year-old Cat Kinsey builds a secret hideout to escape her unhappy homelife, she slowly gets to know a poor family who have come to California after losing their Texas home to the dust storms of the 1930s.

The Wolfs, the most powerful family in California, have a new head--thirty-six-year-old former high school teacher Jenny Wolf. That means Jenny now runs the prestigious San Francisco Tribune. She also controls the legendary pro football team, the Wolves. And she has a murdered father to avenge—if she can survive the killers all around her.

Describes elephant seals with particular emphasis on the Piedras Blancas colony on the central coast of California.

In 1906 detective Isaac Bell goes after the Butcher Bandit who has committed a string of bank robberies and murders in the western states of America and becomes the hunted.