It's fairly common for some books/publications, etc. to be made available at BALUG and other User Group meetings.

These below are currently (subject to availability and/or request) brought by Michael Paoli and/or others to BALUG and some other user group meetings (e.g. Berkeley Unix User Group (BUUG), Bay Area Debian (BAD), Berkeley Linux Users Group, Ubuntu Hour (San Francisco & Berkeley), and sometimes San Francisco Linux Users' Group (SF-LUG) and others).
Other folks may also bring (some of) these and/or additional books, publications, etc.

Want to increase your odds of getting one of these books? :-)
I'll consider these factors:

• make it to the meeting (that's where I generally give the book(s) away for some person(s) in the user group)
• drop a note to the [L]UG's list regarding which title(s) you're interested in (in preference order if more than one), (and for what (noble) purpose(s))
• make it to the meeting on time (or best approximations thereof) which such note(s) of interest are posted earliest/earlier to list

This first set is courtesy of Pearson Education's User Group program (they'd love if one writes a review of these, and especially on-line, and most especially on Amazon):

Ubuntu Unleashed 2015 Edition: Covering 14.10 and 15.04, 10th Edition
By Matthew Helmke
Published Nov 21, 2014 by Sams. Part of the Unleashed series.
Copyright 2015
Dimensions: 7" x 9-1/8"
Pages: 912
Edition: 10th
Book
ISBN-10: 0-672-33837-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33837-3
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0672338378

Perl by Example, 5th Edition
By Ellie Quigley
Published Dec 17, 2014 by Prentice Hall.
Copyright 2015
Dimensions: 7" x 9-1/8"
Pages: 888
Edition: 5th
Book
ISBN-10: 0-13-376081-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-376081-1
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0133760812

Docker Containers LiveLessons
By Christopher Negus
Published Dec 15, 2014 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of the LiveLessons series.
Copyright 2015
Edition: 1st
Downloadable Video
ISBN-10: 0-13-409613-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-409613-1
2.5+ Hours of Video Instruction
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0134096134

(the above publications from Pearson Education's User Group program -
they'd of course also love it if one writes a review - especially
on-line and most especially on Amazon)

Getting Started with Ubuntu 14.04
The Ubuntu Manual Team
http://ubuntu-manual.org/
ISBN-10: 9781500814403