Carving a New Path
Veronica Roth hit the jackpot with her Divergent trilogy, selling millions of copies and spawning a series of movie adaptations. Her new novel, Carve the Mark, which launches a duology, was released in 33 languages simultaneously worldwide. Our review called the book “a gripping space opera about two individuals who share a planet but come from very different worlds” and praised Roth’s “commendable” worldbuilding. It debuts at #1 in children’s frontlist fiction, and #5 in the country overall.
(See all of this week's bestselling books.)
There Is Nothing Like a Dane
Hygge (pronounced HYOO-guh), a Danish term for coziness and well-being, has become a bona fide lifestyle trend in the U.S.; in October, we noticed that several books on the subject were due to land on our shores this year, espousing the virtues of warm company, comforting food and drink, flickering candlelight, and woolen socks. The first of those titles to hit our lists, The Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking, debuts at #12 in hardcover nonfiction.
Movers & Shakers
The slipcased edition of the March graphic novel trilogy, Congressman John Lewis’s memoir of the civil rights movement, returns to our trade paper list this week at #13, following his criticism of, and by, then-president-elect Trump. The three individual volumes each also saw great gains.
Another book moved by current events, 2015’s We Should All Be Feminists, is based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx talk of the same name; the title received a fair amount of mainstream coverage in the lead-up to the inauguration and the Women’s March on Washington. And while Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, a work of science fiction set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, may not sound overtly tied to U.S. politics, it was the first book mentioned on then-president Obama’s widely shared reading list, first published in the New York Times.
New & Notable
Never Never
James Patterson and Candice Fox
#1 Hardcover Fiction, #1 overall
The first full-length novel in the Detective Harriet Blue series follows the BookShots novella Black & Blue, which has sold 32K print copies since its December 2016 release.
The Heart of Aromatherapy
Andrea Butje
#6 Trade Paperback
Butje founded the Aromahead Institute in 1999 for the study and therapeutic use of essential oils; 34K people subscribe to her YouTube channel.
Top 10 Overall
| Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Never Never | Patterson/Fox | Little, Brown | 27,564 |
| 2 | Hidden Figures (movie tie-in) | Margot Lee Shetterly | Morrow | 24,369 |
| 3 | A Dog’s Purpose (movie tie-in) | W. Bruce Cameron | Forge | 22,980 |
| 4 | A Man Called Ove | Fredrik Backman | Washington Square | 21,779 |
| 5 | Carve the Mark | Veronica Roth | HarperCollins/Tegen | 19,484 |
| 6 | Three Days in January | Bret Baier | Morrow | 19,477 |
| 7 | Milk and Honey | Rupi Kaur | Andrews McMeel | 18,847 |
| 8 | Double Down (Wimpy Kid #11) | Jeff Kinney | Amulet | 18,457 |
| 9 | Hillbilly Elegy | J.D. Vance | Harper | 18,278 |
| 10 | The Apartment | Danielle Steel | Dell | 17,852 |
All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.
