Playing Favorites
Sally Hepworth lands at #6 in hardcover fiction with The Good Sister, which our review called an “addictive psychological thriller” whose “punchy prose helps propel the twisty plot to a creepy but satisfying conclusion.” It made by far her strongest debut week showing yet.
Painful Truths
New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe lands at #12 on our hardcover nonfiction list with Empire of Pain, his “sweeping saga of the rise and fall of the family behind OxyContin, the painkiller widely credited with sparking the opioid epidemic in America,” our starred review said. “Readers will be outraged and enthralled in equal measure.” Keefe’s previous works include 2019’s much-lauded Say Nothing, an investigation into an IRA-linked murder in Northern Ireland, which has sold 232K print copies; he’s also the writer and host of the popular 2020 podcast Wind of Change, about Cold War–era spycraft and a power ballad earworm.
Matters of Taste
Pepper Teigen joins daughter and Cravings author Chrissy Teigen on the cookbook shelves with The Pepper Thai Cookbook, an “exciting debut,” our review said, and #6 on our hardcover nonfiction list. Her 80 recipes cover Thai standards (chicken satay with peanut sauce, green papaya salad) and reinterpretations (pad Thai brussels sprouts). In a prepub interview with PW, Pepper Teigen discussed moving from Thailand to the U.S. in the 1980s, when finding the right ingredients for her native cuisine required some legwork. Still, when asked, “Do you have any advice for home cooks who are making Thai food for the first time?” she responded, “Honestly, I think cooking American food is more complicated!”
NEW & NOTABLE
LIGHTER STEP-BY-STEP INSTANT POT COOKBOOK
Jeffrey Eisner
#1 Trade Paperback, #5 overall
This time last year, YouTuber Eisner had a hit with The Step-by-Step Instant Pot Cookbook, which debuted at #10 overall. His new collection of slimmed-down recipes sold twice as many print units in its first week as its predecessor did.
WHEN THE STARS GO DARK
Paula McLain
#14 Hardcover Fiction
In this “stunning crime novel,” our starred review said, Anna Hart, “a San Francisco detective who’s on indefinite leave following a tragic incident,” gets drawn into the search for a missing teenager. “McLain matches poetic prose with deep characterizations as she shines a light on the kindness in her characters’ souls.”
THE ROCK FROM THE SKY
Jon Klassen
#25 Picture Books
Five connected vignettes star a trio of pensive animals placed in what Caldecott Medalist Klassen described in a prepub interview with PW as “an impossible, insurmountable situation.” Our starred review said the author-illustrator delivers “96 pages of dark, Beckett-caliber comedy.”
