This Week's Bestsellers: May 23, 2016

Backman’s Back

Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s third novel to be published in English, Britt-Marie Was Here, was released two weeks ago and this week lands on our Hardcover Fiction list at #25. Together, his three books have sold more than 282K print units, the bulk of those in trade paperback: this week, A Man Called Ove, reprinted in trade paper in 2015, is #9 on that list, and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, released in May, is at #21.

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

Seeing Double

Unashamed by Australian evangelist Christine Caine debuts on our Hardcover Nonfiction list at #6. If that sentence gives you a feeling of déjà vu, it may be because last week another book called Unashamed, this one by Christian rapper Lecrae Moore, debuted at #4 in nonfiction; it’s at #18 this week. The idea of confronting feelings of shame has been trending in inspirational circles at least since Brené Brown’s 2012 TED Talk on the subject, which has been viewed more than six million times. And we’re not done yet: in a little over a month, Crossway is publishing yet another book called Unashamed, by biblical counselor Heather Davis Nelson.

Prayer and Pomp and Circumstance

Including the two Unashamed books, a full one-fifth of this week’s hardcover list is faith-based. The Daniel Prayer by Anne Graham Lotz, an evangelist whose father is Billy Graham, debuts at #12 and focuses on the power of prayer born of adversity; Lotz’s husband died in August 2015, a month before the couple’s 49th anniversary. At #16 and #24 respectively are two titles that aim at the mortarboard-and-tassel crowd: Jesus Calling for Graduates and God’s Promises for Graduates.

Movie Watch

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes continues to burn up the charts: the two movie tie-ins plus the conventional trade paperback are at #3, #4, and #6 in the country. Also this week, two other movie-related books debut on our lists. The Art of Zootopia by Jessica Julius, which was published when the blockbuster movie opened in March, lands at #25 in Hardcover Nonfiction. After several weeks out of stock, according to Chronicle, a late-April reprint made the title widely available to key accounts last week.

And while not an official tie-in, The Jungle Book, a coloring book, pubbed March 29 and debuts this week at #22 in Trade Paperback. The movie opened April 15, and the coloring book’s sales have climbed steadily since.

New & Notable

LaRose
Louise Erdrich
#8 Hardcover Fiction
Erdrich’s 15th novel, which centers on the repercussions of the mistaken shooting of a child in a North Dakota community, “explores the quest for justice and the thirst for retribution,” according to our starred review.

Valiant Ambition
Nathaniel Philbrick
#3 Hardcover Nonfiction
Our starred review said Philbrick’s latest, which traces the relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold, “casts new light on a period of American history with which many readers may assume familiarity.”

Meathead
Meathead Goldwyn
#17 Hardcover Fiction
A radio interviewer once referred to Goldwyn, whose cookbook sports a foreword from The Food Lab’s J. Kenji López-Alt, as a “barbecue whisperer and hedonism evangelist.”

Our Great Big Backyard
Laura Bush and Jenna Bush Hager, illus. by Jacqueline Rogers
#2 Children’s Picture Books
The former first lady and her daughter commemorate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service with a picture-book tribute.

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misidentified Jessica Julius. She is the author of The Art of Zootopia, not the illustrator for The Jungle Book.