The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists
It’s Monday, which means it’s time to look at the books everyone has been buying lately! This is a simple question with a strangely complicated answer, because every bestseller list uses its own cryptic system of data points and criteria. That’s where we come in: we’ve looked at the four biggest bestseller lists and noted the overlap to get an overview of the biggest books of the moment.
To get these numbers, we look at the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; Publishers Weekly; and Indie Bestsellers, Fiction and Nonfiction, both Paperback and Hardcover. New additions to the list this week are bolded.
This week has five new releases, which shows what a big month May is for new releases. There’s Meet Me at the Lake, the newest book from Carley Fortune, author of Every Summer After. Then there’s the long-awaited The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone — his last book came out in 2008! Of course, the newest James Patterson made the list: The 23rd Midnight. And Taylor Swift’s fanbase showed up for her Little Golden Book biography. Finally, there’s a fantasy novel about a war college for dragon riders that’s getting a lot of love on TikTok: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.
A quirk of this round up is that it’s hard for children’s or YA books to make the list, because the Indie Bestsellers and NYT Bestsellers break them up into their own lists. So, it’s worth mentioning that The Sun and the Star (From the World of Percy Jackson) by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro is a bestseller this week, and it’s actually #4 overall on Publishers Weekly, though it doesn’t appear below.
This list continues to have a lack of diversity on many levels, including being disproportionately by white authors. A new release that deserves more attention is Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Books On All Four Bestseller Lists:
Happy Place by Emily Henry (NYT #2, Publishers Weekly #3, Amazon #1, Indie Bestsellers #1)
Books On Three Bestseller Lists:
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann (NYT #1, Amazon #6, Indie Bestsellers #1)
The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama (NYT #2, Amazon #4, Indie Bestsellers #5)
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (NYT #8, Amazon #2, Indie Bestsellers #2)
Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune (NYT #3, Publishers Weekly #8, Indie Bestsellers #2)
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk (NYT #5, Amazon #10, Indie Bestsellers #4)
Books On Two Bestseller Lists:
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave (Amazon #3, Indie Bestsellers #4)
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (NYT #4, Indie Bestsellers #4)
The 23rd Midnight by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (NYT #1, Publishers Weekly #7)
Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography by Wendy Loggia and Elisa Chavarri (Publishers Weekly #1, Amazon #8)
Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia and Bill Gifford (NYT #4, Amazon #5)
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (NYT #8, Indie Bestsellers #1)
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (NYT #7, Indie Bestsellers #4)
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (Amazon #7, Indie Bestsellers #5)
Atomic Habits by James Clear (Amazon #3, Indie Bestsellers #10)
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (NYT #5, Publishers Weekly #9)
Simply Lies by David Baldacci (NYT #9, Amazon #6)
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover (NYT #7, Indie Bestsellers #9)
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.
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