Fixin’ to Get to the Top
The #1 book in the country is The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of HGTV’s Fixer Upper. Their memoir, written with frequent celebrity coauthor Mark Dagostino, discusses their personal partnership as well as their professional one, Magnolia Homes, a remodeling and design business in Waco, Tex. The couple’s huge following—1.6 million on Instagram, 705K across three Twitter accounts—translated into a massive debut on our list. In one week, the book sold enough print copies to be the year’s 8th-bestselling personal memoir to date.
(See all of this week's bestselling books.)
Behind the Screen
A pair of new titles lead us to believe that the same people who curl up on the couch to watch TV also like to pore over books about their favorite shows. At #6 in Hardcover Fiction, The Secret History of Twin Peaks is a dossier-style assemblage of photos, classified FBI memoranda, archival letters, and more, expanding the world of David Lynch’s offbeat Pacific Northwest town. The original series went off the air 25 years ago; Showtime will air a new miniseries, starring much of the original cast, in 2017.
Just days before the last Twin Peaks episode aired in June 1991, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander landed on bookshelves, launching a phenomenon that encompasses eight novels (and counting) plus a TV series. The Making of Outlander, a guide to seasons one and two of the time-traveling action-romance, debuts at #19 in Hardcover Nonfiction and eases the long wait for fans between the second season, which ended in June, and the third, which begins airing in April 2017.
Christmas Comes Earlier Every Year
While the Children’s Picture Books list groans with a sackful of Halloween titles—17 spooky books out of 25—adult romantics have already moved on to the December holiday season. Seven Christmas novels sit under the Mass Market tree, plus two each in Hardcover Fiction and Trade Paperback. Out of those 11 yuletide titles, five are new this week.
#16 Hardcover Fiction: The Christmas Town by Donna VanLiere
#22 Trade Paperback: The Christmas Wish by Nora Roberts
#24 Trade Paperback: The Perfect Christmas by Debbie Macomber
#8 Mass Market: Dashing Through the Snow by Debbie Macomber
#16 Mass Market: Three Christmas Wishes by Sheila Roberts
New & Notable
Hannah Hart
#7 Hardcover Nonfiction
The YouTuber, who first hit our lists with the 2014 offbeat cookbook My Drunk Kitchen, returns with a confessional book of personal essays.
Paris for One and Other Stories
Jojo Moyes
#15 Hardcover Fiction
This “bold, humorous, and genuine” (in the words of our review) collection includes the title novella plus eight short stories by the Me Before You author.
The Daily Stoic
Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
#19 Hardcover Nonfiction
Newly translated quotes from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, and many others inform a year’s worth of meditations.
Top 10 Overall
| Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Magnolia Story | Gaines/Gaimes | W | 121,024 |
| 2 | Killing the Rising Sun | O’Reilly/Dugard | Holt | 45,629 |
| 3 | The Girl on the Train | Paula Hawkins | Riverhead | 36,162 |
| 4 | Two by Two | Nicholas Sparks | Grand Central | 35,930 |
| 5 | Harry Potter and the Cursed Child | J.K. Rowling et al. | Scholastic/Levine | 30,832 |
| 6 | Escape Clause | John Sandford | Putnam | 30,060 |
| 7 | Small Great Things | Jodi Picoult | Ballantine | 24,769 |
| 8 | The Girl on the Train (mass market movie tie-in) | Paula Hawkins | Riverhead | 24,714 |
| 9 | Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen | Simon & Schuster | 21,685 |
| 10 | The Girl on the Train (trade paper movie tie-in) | Paula Hawkins | Riverhead | 21,169 |
All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted
CORRECTION: Due to an error in bibliographic information, a previous version of this article, and this week’s bestseller lists, indicated that The Secret History of Twin Peaks is a nonfiction title. We’ve corrected the article and the lists to reflect that it is fiction.
