Dressed for Success
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, July’s #1 Indie Next List pick, is “delightfully bonkers,” our review said, and an “energetic romp through the gothic genre.” It pubbed June 30 and did better in its second week than its first, landing Moreno-Garcia at #19 in hardcover fiction. In those two weeks, Mexican Gothic sold more than half the copies that her top-selling title, 2019’s Gods of Jade and Shadow, has sold since its release. The book club kit includes a paper doll of the book’s protagonist and her 1950s wardrobe.
Doing Damned Well
Debuting at #15 in children’s frontlist fiction, The Damned is the second installment of the series Renée Ahdieh launched with 2019’s The Beautiful. Our review called the first book “captivating,” praising the series heroine’s “wit and incredible grit.” It heralded what a recent PW article called “The Return of the YA Vampire,” and unlike the undead, Ahdieh is enjoying her place in the sun. Stops on her virtual tour included a July 8 Books & Books–hosted chat, Spill The Damned Tea, with Roshani Chokshi, author of the Gilded Wolves YA fantasy trilogy.
A Hero and a Scholar
On July 3, Disney Plus debuted a filmed Broadway performance of Hamilton, starring show creator and title-role originator Lin-Manuel Miranda. The week after the production began airing, the 2004 biography that inspired the musical, Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, sold 17K print copies and just missed landing among the top 10 books overall. Other books that saw big gains: Hamilton: The Revolution, a 2016 behind-the-scenes look at the show by Miranda and cultural critic and director Jeremy McCarter, and Who Was Alexander Hamilton? by Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso, part of Penguin Workshop’s popular Who Was? middle grade series.
Alexander Hamilton +695%
Hamilton: The Revolution +295%
Who Was Alexander Hamilton? +178
NEW & NOTABLE
A BEAUTIFUL FOOLISH ENDEAVOR
Hank Green
#4 Hardcover Fiction
Green’s sequel to 2018’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing requires a bit of patience, our review said: “Readers will have to hang in until the midpoint before the plot begins to come together, but once it does, it’s thrilling to watch the puzzle pieces fall into place.” In addition to the 12K print copies that landed it at #4 on our list, the book sold 8,000 signed copies.
SEPARATED
Jacob Soboroff
#6 Hardcover Nonfiction
“MSNBC correspondent Soboroff examines the origins and ramifications of the Trump administration’s ‘deliberate and systemic separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents,’ ” our review said, “in his harrowing and deeply informed debut.”
