This Week's Bestsellers: May 9, 2016

Wild About Coloring

As we reported last week, the coloring book trend has prompted at least one company to enter book publishing for the first time: Newbourne Media, which specializes in CDs and digital music content, began releasing coloring books paired with stress-relieving CDs earlier this year. The first of those books to hit our list, Wild About Cats, debuts at #22 in Hardcover Nonfiction.

On our Trade Paperback list, two new titles draw on established trends: coloring books based on beloved fictional worlds, and self-published, foul-mouthed coloring books. At #15, The World of Debbie Macomber contains scenes inspired by the prolific author’s homespun romance novels, and one notch below, Memos to Shitty People by James Alexander channels aggression toward neighbors, coworkers, and others, with highly decorated, decidedly NSFW phrases to color.

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

Fanning the Flames

Memorial Day is coming, and that means a bunch of barbecue books are getting all up in our collective grill. Two of them debut this week in trade paperback: at #9, Master of the Grill, new from America’s Test Kitchen, offers tool tips, examines the relative merits of coal and gas grills, and supplies regional recipes including Alabama BBQ Chicken and Kansas City Sticky Ribs. Diva Q’s Barbecue by Danielle Bennett, at #17, features almost 200 recipes from the host of the Travel Channel show BBQ Crawl and is new from Vancouver-based lifestyle imprint Appetite by Random House. Pass the Smokin’ Good Sweet Potatoes with Bourbon Butter, please.

Stand and Deliver

A couple of books for desk jockeys are new to our Hardcover Nonfiction list. At #3, The Ideal Team Player is the latest business title by Patrick Lencioni, whose The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002) has sold 1.7 million print copies, 51K during the first four months of this year alone.

Physical therapist Kelly Starrett checks in at #6 with Deskbound, offering advice on how to counteract the ill effects of too much sitting. Starrett’s Becoming a Supple Leopard, which draws on his experience with Olympic gold medalists, professional ballet dancers, and others, has sold 175K hardcover copies over two editions.

Movie Watch

The big-screen adaptation of Me Before You, the 2013 novel by Jojo Moyes, opens in theaters June 3. This week, two tie-in editions were published and hit #3 on our Trade Paperback list, and #9 on our Mass Market list. The conventional trade paperback sold even better, and this week is the #7 book in country; since its release, it’s sold 652K print units. On our Hardcover Fiction list, the 2015 sequel, After You, continues to do well. It’s #16 on the hardcover fiction list, up two notches and 16% over last week.

New & Notable

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Frans de Waal

#24 Hardcover Nonfiction

Primatologist and animal behaviorist de Waal (2013’s The Bonobo and the Atheist, among others) examines the ways scientists work to understand various animals’ intelligence in what our starred review called a “thoroughly engaging, remarkably informative, and deeply insightful book.”

Hide Away

Iris Johansen

#8 Hardcover Fiction

Our starred review called the 19th Eve Duncan outing, in which a Mexican drug lord seeks to kill the 11-year-old daughter of a rival gang leader, “a first-rate novel of romantic suspense.”

The Raven King

Maggie Stiefvater

#1 Children’s Frontlist Fiction

In this fourth and final novel in the author’s Raven Cycle YA fantasy series, “the playful, imaginative force of Stiefvater’s writing works its magic once again,” according to our starred review.

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.