This Week's Bestsellers: April 11, 2016

Girls vs. Boys

A pair of debuts on our Hardcover Nonfiction this week sport similar titles that belie otherwise disparate content. At #11, Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein is a successor of sorts to the author’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter (2011), a look at the sinister side of princess culture. Girls examines the post-princess years, and how high school girls and college-age young women, as the subtitle puts it, are “navigating the complicated new landscape” of sexuality.

At #12 on the list, Lust & Wonder is the latest memoir by Augusten Burroughs, best known for 2002’s Running with Scissors. In the new book, Burroughs, who married his literary agent, Christopher Schelling, in 2013, writes about his search for love in pre- and post-9/11 New York.

(See all of this week's bestselling books.)

New & Notable

Harry Potter Magical Places & Characters

#1 Trade Paperback; #2 overall

The latest coloring book from the Rowlingverse bests its older siblings on the trade paper list: Harry Potter Coloring Book (#3) and Harry Potter Magical Creatures (#5.)

Brush of Wings

Karen Kingsbury

#3 Hardcover Fiction; #10 overall

The finale of Kinsbury’s Angels Walking inspirational romance trilogy had a bigger opening week than either of the first two books.

Party On

Lauren Conrad spent her late teens and early 20s as a reality TV celeb, on MTV’s Laguna Beach and The Hills. She parlayed that career into one in fashion design and, later, writing. Beginning with 2009’s L.A. Candy, she has a half-dozen YA novels to her credit as well as a trio of lifestyle titles: Style (2010), Beauty (2012), and now Celebrate, which debuts at #6 on our Hardcover Nonfiction list. Together, Conrad’s books have sold more than 1.1 million print units.

Social Eats

This week’s Hardcover Nonfiction list logs two new entries into the blog-to-cookbook files. Eating in the Middle by Andie Mitchell, at #23, follows up the author’s 2015 weight-loss memoir, It Was Me All Along (37K in hardcover and trade paper) with the 80 “mostly wholesome” recipes she says have helped her reach and maintain a healthy weight. Mitchell’s social reach includes 32.7K Instagram followers and 10.8K Twitter followers.

At #25, The Love & Lemons Cookbook is the first print offering from Jeanine Donofrio (155K Instagram followers, 11.6K Twitter followers), whose Love & Lemons blog was named Saveur Readers’ Choice Best Cooking Blog of 2014. She focuses on farmers’ market ingredients and pantry staples in this ode to “impromptu cooking.”

A Legend Falls, and Rises

Exuberant novelist, poet, and essayist Jim Harrison died March 26, a few weeks after publication of his collection The Ancient Minstrel, whose title story is about “America’s best-loved geezer,” a figure PW’s review describes as “very much like” Harrison himself. This week, Minstrel’s print unit sales are up 123% over last week, giving the book its best sales week since publication and landing it for the first time on our Hardcover Fiction list, at #22.

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.