eBook Version
You will receive access to this electronic text via email after using the shopping cart above to complete your purchase.
This book tells the story of the area's botanical wonders in the format of an easy-to-read natural history guidebook. This part of California boasts an impressive diversity of plants, with more than 1,300 different native species (more than in the entire state of Alaska) and countless other introduced weeds and horticultural plants. The book vividly portrays the beauty, diversity, and history of the abundant and widespread wild and weedy plants in the area surrounding the city of San Luis Obispo and western portions of the California Central Coast. 
Matt Ritter's succinct, non-technical prose is richly illustrated with the author's photographs of landscapes, plants, and flowers. Over 150 full-color pages describe the habitat, botany, ecology, edible or medicinal properties, uses by Native Americans, etymology, and gardening uses of more than 200 plants. Encyclopedic in scope and full of interesting facts and stories, this comprehensive naturalist's guide is a wonderful overview of a historically and botanically rich area. 
Matt Ritter is a member of the Biological Sciences Department and Director of the Cal Poly Plant Conservatory at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He teaches courses in general biology, general botany, and plant diversity and ecology. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from U.C. Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. in biology from U.C. San Diego.

Plants of San Luis Obispo: Their Lives and Stories

Science & Math

Ritter, Matt

Biological Sciences

Kendall/Hunt Publishing

California Plants is an essential resource for outdoor enthusiasts. With his vibrant photographs and lively writing, Matt Ritter takes the reader on a journey through the Golden State's iconic landscapes and abundant plant life. This definitive guide features more than 500 species, along with detailed descriptions, fascinating natural history stories, and handy tree and wildflower color identification charts.

California Plants: A Guide to Our Iconic Flora

History

Americas

Pacific Street Publishing

Review\n"A bleak, well-written, environmental, science fiction actioner." -- Kirkus Reviews\n"A terrific novel of climate change and genetic engineering; a first-rate cautionary read set against the backdrop of an all-too-probable future." -- Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-Winning Author of Hominids\n"Ritter is a masterful storyteller. His fluent and literary prose is something that the rising new cli-fi genre needs more of." -- Dan Bloom, Editor, The Cli-Fi Report\n--Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist-- 
--Shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award, Fiction--\nRAINWALKERS is a story set in the not-so-distant future in a crumbling version of John Steinbeck's Salinas Valley, after the breakup of the United States. A once rich and prosperous agricultural land is now a war-torn nation-state known only as The Valley. To combat chronic droughts, scientists seed clouds with genetically engineered bacteria that create regular rains but unintentionally make the rains lethal to humans. Anyone caught in the rain dies within seconds, yet there are rumors of people who survive... known as rainwalkers.\nIn a profoundly disquieting, near-future world, this novel explores controversial border walls, a tyrannical government, and man's attempts to dominate nature.\nRainwalkers is an unforgettable story of a father's undying love and his struggle to rescue his daughter in a precarious future world that could become our own.\n"A terrific novel of climate change and genetic engineering; a first-rate cautionary read set against the backdrop of an all-too-probable future."-- Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids

Rainwalkers

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

Review\n"Crisp descriptions...touches of melancholy, hope, and foreboding...Halo around the Moon is a dark mystery novel that focuses on the strange, unpredictable ways in which events and people are connected."—Foreword Reviews\n"Ritter's taut murder mystery doubles as a smart, engaging story."—Kirkus Reviews\nIn his intriguing and unexpected second novel, Biology Professor Matt Ritter delivers a strange and startling generational tale of hardship and triumph in the American West. Natural science blends with history, and an unforeseen chain of causation emerges. In current day Los Angeles, UCLA Professor Marcus Melter is called to the scene of a gruesome murder by his friend, Detective Jack Bratton. While the case leads them into a mysterious world of crime and conspiracy, we learn about the bizarre history of these two men's connected families. Ritter uses his keen natural history observations and unerring sense of place to spin a haunting narrative of intertwined families moving between continents and across the American West, each ultimately affecting the other's path. Marcus and Jack become the axis around which Ritter spins an interconnected story of time, cause and effect, and small random occurrences that create sweeping changes in the world. Earthworms' arboreal genocide, death at the headwaters of the Los Angeles River, the courtship of a hawk, the growth of California walnuts, a mutiny on an 18th-century French warship; all strands of an intricate and convoluted web bridging the gap of time and space. Halo around the Moon is a modern-day-mystery of chance encounters, old family secrets, and a tangled history of coincidental past and present events set in the danger and turmoil of a Los Angeles crime investigation.

Halo Around The Moon

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Matt Ritter

We bring the strength and beauty of the natural world into our urban landscapes by planting trees, and California is blessed with a rich horticultural history, visible in an abundance of cultivated trees that enrich our lives with extraordinary color, bizarre shapes, unusual textures, and unexpected aromas. A Californian's Guide to the Trees among Us features over 150 of California's most commonly grown trees. Whether native or cultivated, these are the trees that muffle noise, create wildlife habitats, mitigate pollution, conserve energy, and make urban living healthier and more peaceful. Used as a field guide or read with pleasure for the liveliness of the prose, this book will allow readers to learn the stories behind the trees that shade our parks, grace our yards, and line our streets. Rich in photographs and illustrations, overflowing with anecdote and information, A Californian's Guide to the Trees among Us opens our eyes to a world of beauty just outside our front doors.

A Californian's Guide to the Trees among Us

Sports & Outdoors

Heyday

Now expanded and updated: Californians’ favorite reference book to trees in our everyday lives\n“Anyone who is curious about trees is sure to find education and inspiration in these pages.”—David Allen Sibley, author of The Sibley Guide to Trees and The Sibley Guide to Birds\nFor more than ten years, A Californian’s Guide to the Trees among Us has taught Californians the what, why, and how of trees in our cities and towns. This edition has been updated by the author to reflect new trends in urban forestry, with a revised introduction, updated taxonomy and nomenclature, and more than ten additional species featured.\nMatt Ritter introduces us to over 160 of California’s most commonly grown urban trees in this expanded edition of his best-selling book. Whether native or cultivated, these are the trees that muffle noise, create wildlife habitats, mitigate pollution, conserve energy, and make urban living healthier and more peaceful. Used as a field guide or read with pleasure for the liveliness of the prose, this book will allow readers to learn the stories behind the trees that shade our parks, grace our yards, and line our streets. Rich in photographs and illustrations, overflowing with anecdote and information, A Californian’s Guide to the Trees among Us opens our eyes to a world of beauty just outside our front doors.

A Californian's Guide to the Trees Among Us: Expanded and Updated

Reference

RAINWALKERS is a story set in the not-so-distant future in a crumbling version of John Steinbeck’s Salinas Valley, after the breakup of the United States. A once rich and prosperous agricultural land is now a war-torn nation-state known only as The Valley. To combat chronic droughts, scientists seeded clouds with genetically engineered bacteria that created regular rains but unintentionally made the rains lethal to humans. Anyone caught in the rain dies within seconds, yet there are rumors of people who survive… known as rainwalkers.
In a land of forced labor camps and waning oil fields, poverty-stricken agricultural communities support the metropolis of Salinas City and the authoritarian Valley Administration in their unending war against neighboring nations. In desperation, the Valley Administration intensifies their search for rainwalkers, who are believed to be powerful weapons in the border wars, by forcing children housed at Valley schools into the rain to be screened for resistance.
War hero Willie Taft lives a quiet agrarian life until the Administration abducts him and his wife, separating them from their daughter. Although his wife is killed during their escape, Willie continues his journey to rescue their daughter. He faces mortal challenges from the Administration military force, the sociopath bounty hunter on his trail, and the ever-present toxic rain. Time is running out as he fights his way through the Valley back to his daughter’s school before she is forcefully screened with other children in the deadly rain.
"A terrific novel of climate change and genetic engineering; a first-rate cautionary read set against the backdrop of an all-too-probable future." -- Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of "Hominids"

Brown Posey Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ritter, Matt. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ritter, Matt

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ritter, Matt. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Plants of San Luis Obispo: Their Lives and Stories

California Plants: A Guide to Our Iconic Flora

Rainwalkers

Halo Around The Moon

A Californian's Guide to the Trees among Us

A Californian's Guide to the Trees Among Us: Expanded and Updated

Rainwalkers