This Week's Bestsellers: September 4, 2017

Real Talk

The #1 book in the U.S., Sue Grafton’s latest Kinsey Millhone mystery (see New & Notable) is also #1 in each region across the country. But among nonfiction titles, there’s no clear standout, with an array of books divvying up the map: Rupi Kaur’s poetry blockbuster; Jeannette Walls’s memoir, currently on the big screen; a personal success title and perennial bestseller from 2007 by Tom Rath; and retired Navy admiral William H. McRaven’s graduation speech turned motivational treatise.

Northeast, Pacific: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Mid Atlantic, East North Central: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

West North Central, Mountain: StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath

South Atlantic, South Central: Make Your Bed by William H. McRaven

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

Movie Watch

American Assassin, #14 on our mass market list, is the first of Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp thrillers to be adapted for film. Originally, the first movie adaptation was to be 2005’s Consent to Kill, but CBS Films later decided to start with 2010’s American Assassin, a prequel novel that explains how Rapp became a CIA officer.

Dylan O’Brien (Maze Runner) stars as Rapp, Sanaa Lathan (The Best Man) is the CIA deputy director who recruits him, and Michael Keaton (Birdman) plays his mentor. The movie opens September 15.

Since Flynn’s death in 2013, Kyle Mills has continued the Mitch Rapp series. The most recent installment, Order to Kill, is #18 on our Mass Market list. The next book, Enemy of the State, pubs September 5.

New & Notable

Y Is for Yesterday
Sue Grafton
#1 Hardcover Fiction, #1 overall
In Grafton’s (probably) penultimate alphabet mystery, private investigator Kinsey Millhone, first introduced in 1982’s A Is for Alibi, investigates the fallout from a decade-old crime while her mass-murdering nemesis from the previous book (X) remains at large. Amid the high-stakes drama, Millhone keeps up her nothing-held-back first-person narration, describing a “guy magnet” acquaintance as having “knockers twice the size of mine.”

Autumn
Karl Ove Knausgaard
#25 Hardcover Nonfiction
The author of the autobiographical My Struggle novels begins a projected four-book series of memoirs structured around the seasons. Our review said that this volume, written as a series of letters to Knausgaard’s unborn daughter, “encourages the reader to see the connections between quotidian things and the bigger picture and to appreciate both continuity and change.”

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.