Year Two
Fire and Fury is the #1 book in the country for the third week in a row. As the U.S. passed the first anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration, four books debuted on our hardcover nonfiction list, each taking a critical view of the current political moment.
#2 It’s Even Worse Than You Think by David Cay Johnston
#3 Together We Rise by the Women’s March Organizers and Condé Nast
#7 Trumpocracy by David Frum
#18 How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
(See all of this week's bestselling books.)
Sea Legs
The story collection The Largess of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson, who died in 2017, debuts at #19 in hardcover fiction. Our starred review called the book “a masterpiece of deep humanity and astonishing prose.” Johnson won the National Book Award for 2007’s Tree of Smoke, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for that book and for 2011’s Train Dreams. Sea Maiden is Johnson’s second story collection, after the seminal Jesus’ Son (1992).
Movie Watch
The film 12 Strong, an adaptation of Doug Stanton’s Horse Soldiers (2009), opened in theaters on January 19. It tells the true story of a U.S. Special Forces team deployed to Afghanistan—on horseback—shortly after 9/11. The tie-ins pubbed in December and the trade paper edition debuts on our list at #17, with print units up 61% from the previous week. Mass market units are up 35%, lifting the title to #10.
New & Notable
Iron Gold
Pierce Brown
#2 Hardcover Fiction
Brown delivers a fourth book in what was originally called the Red Rising trilogy; book five, Dark Age, is scheduled for September. The series to date has sold 367K copies in hardcover and trade paper.
Indian Instant Pot Cookbook
Urvashi Pitre
#15 Trade Paper
This South Asian spin on the Instant Pot craze pubbed in September and debuts on our list with its best weekly print sales to date. It did well around the holidays and has been getting plenty of attention in January; the New Yorker published an interview with Pitre and posted her butter chicken recipe.
Zenith
Lindsay Cummings and Sasha Alsberg
#18 Children’s & YA Frontlist Fiction
After a 62-page installment of this originally self-published space opera debuted at #1 on the New York Times YA e-books list, the authors and their agents decided it was time to shop it around; Harlequin Teen picked up this book and its forthcoming sequel.
Top 10 Overall
| Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fire and Fury | Michael Wolff | Holt | 324,188 |
| 2 | Dog Man and Cat Kid (Dog Man #4) | Dav Pilkey | Graphix | 28,475 |
| 3 | A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L’Engle | Square Fish | 21,277 |
| 4 | The Woman in the Window | A.J. Finn | Morrow | 20,446 |
| 5 | City of Endless Night | Preston/Child | Grand Central | 20,233 |
| 6 | No Middle Name | Lee Child | Dell | 19,695 |
| 7 | The Sun and Her Flowers | Rupi Kaur | Andrews McMeel | 18,145 |
| 8 | The Getaway (Diary of a Wimpy Kid #12) | Jeff Kinney | Amulet | 17,033 |
| 9 | Milk and Honey | Rupi Kaur | Andrews McMeel | 16,567 |
| 10 | Wonder | R.J. Palacio | Knopf | 16,500 |
All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.
