Riot Headline Early Black Friday Deals on Hardcovers and Paperbacks (UPDATED November 22)
News

The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Danika Ellis

Associate Editor

Danika spends most of her time talking about queer women books at the Lesbrary. Blog: The Lesbrary Twitter: @DanikaEllis

There is news in the bestseller list category: the Publishers Weekly list has gone subscribers only…which seems strange, because what’s the appeal of being included on a bestseller list that very few people can see? Most of the New York Times content is paywalled, and they have public bestseller lists.

This week has fewer titles that made all five bestseller lists, partly because Publishers Weekly counts by ISBN, not title, so two books (It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover and Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance) appear twice. In fact, Colleen Hoover has three of the top ten spots on PW between It Ends With Us and It Starts With Us.

We have the dubious distinction of two books on the bestseller roundup this week that were covered on the If Books Could Kill podcast: Hillbilly Elegy and The Anxious Generation. If you want a funny and informative takedown of these books, I highly recommend listening to those episodes. You might find these Book Riot posts from 2016 and 2020 relevant again: Lies, Damn Lies, and Hillbilly Elegy and 15 Books About Appalachia to Read Instead of Hillbilly Elegy.

cover of James by Percival Everett

This list continues to have a lack of diversity on many levels, including being disproportionately by white authors. Some Indie Bestsellers you should know about are James by Percival Everett and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.

To get these numbers, we look at the USA Today overall top 10; Publishers Weekly overall top 10; The New York Times top 10, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts top 10, both Fiction and Nonfiction; and Indie Bestsellers top 10, Fiction and Nonfiction, both Paperback and Hardcover. New additions to the list this week are bolded.

Books On All Five Bestseller Lists:

Cover of The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

The Women by Kristin Hannah

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Books On Four Bestseller Lists:

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT, Indie Bestsellers)

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (USA Today, NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

Books On Three Bestseller Lists:

cover of The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT)

Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (USA Today, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Book of Bill (Gravity Falls) by Alex Hirsch (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Amazon)

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Housemaid Is Watching by Freida McFadden (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)


Go beyond the bestseller lists with made-for-you book recommendations from TBR, our book recommendation service!

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.