Blazing a Trail

In its third week on sale, Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here, about a set of twins with a tendency to burst into flames, debuts on our hardcover fiction list at #16. Strong advance buzz included our starred review: “Wilson captures the wrenching emotions of caring for children in this exceptional, and exceptionally hilarious, novel.” Post-publication, the book got a boost from several corners, among them its selection as Read with Jenna’s November pick, and the news of a forthcoming screen adaptation to be written by the team who adapted John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars.

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

Seeing Double

Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush have the #5 book in the country with Sisters First, a picture book celebration of sisterhood illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki. “Though the verse’s rhythm and rhyme are sometimes strained, the story’s genuine sentiment shines through brightly,” our review said. It’s a fanciful take on themes Hager and Bush explored in their 2017 adult book of the same title, which has sold 204K print copies.

Extra Helpings

Updates to two food-focused classics—one for home cooks, the other for restaurant-goers—debut on our lists. Irma S. Rombauer self-published Joy of Cooking in 1931; the ninth edition, updated by John Becker, Rombauer’s great-grandson, and Becker’s wife, Megan Scott, debuts at #9 in hardcover nonfiction. “Becker and Scott have improved upon a classic without bending it so sharply that it will feel dated in a decade,” our starred review said of the title, which includes 600 new recipes and updates more than 4,000.

“We tried to preserve the sense of being there for cooks,” Becker told PW, “not necessarily trying to prescribe, but trying to be a resource.”

The Zagat Survey, Tim and Nina Zagat’s compilation of crowdsourced New York City restaurant reviews, launched in 1979 and eventually spread to more than 70 cities. Google bought Zagat in 2011 and published its last printed guides in 2016. In 2018, restaurant review platform the Infatuation acquired Zagat, and is nudging the brand back into print with

Zagat 2020 New York City Restaurants, #4 in trade paper. The Infatuation’s Chris Stang told the New York Times, “You could consider the guide to be like a paper app.”

New & Notable

Twisted Twenty-Six
Janet Evanovich
#1 Hardcover Fiction, #2 overall
In the latest Stephanie Plum out- ing, the bounty hunter’s grand- mother is widowed within 45 minutes of marrying a local gangster, and Plum needs to fends off the groom’s former criminal associates.

With All Due Respect
Nikki R. Haley
#2 Hardcover Nonfiction, #4 overall
“Former South Carolina governor Haley,” our review said, “delivers a selective and self-serving account of her stewardship of her home state in the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston church shooting and her tenure as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.”

No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference
Greta Thunberg
#9 Trade Paperback
This volume, which the publisher says has sold hundreds of thou- sands of copies in Europe, collects the teenage climate activist’s speeches through September 2019.

All unit sales per NPD BookScan except where noted.