The Sky’s the Limit

Sarah J. Maas has the #1 book in the country with House of Sky and Breath, book two in her Crescent City fantasy series. First-week print unit sales are almost triple those of its predecessor, 2020’s House of Earth and Blood, which has sold 308K print copies since its release. The 2021 edition of the latter is #13 on our trade paperback list with its best weekly print unit sales to date.

Paradise Found

The #7 book in the country, Heaven Official’s Blessing, Vol. 2, is a danmei novel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, known to fans as MXTX. Danmei stories are M/M romances originating in China, similar to BL (boys’-love) manga. An anime version began airing on Netflix in April 2021, and Seven Seas Entertainment released vol. 1 in December, along with the first volumes in two other MXTX series. Together, MXTX’s four releases have sold 170K print copies.

Human Kindness

The Christian devotional Good Enough, #3 on our hardcover nonfiction list, is by Duke Divinity School professor Kate Bowler and her colleague Jessica Richie, who is the executive producer of Bowler’s Everything Happens podcast on North Carolina Public Radio. When PW spoke with Bowler before the release of her 2021 memoir, No Cure for Being Human, she offered a preview of Good Enough: “In it, I try to lovingly talk to people about focusing on what is possible today,” she said. “I like books that get at the question of how we live beautifully inside the things we can’t change.”

NEW & NOTABLE

DIABLO MESA
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
#2 Hardcover Fiction
“Bestsellers Preston and Child go full X-Files in their excellent third thriller featuring archaeologist Nora Kelly and FBI agent Corrie Swanson,” our starred review said. “The taut suspense and tight plotting that marked the authors’ earliest Pendergast novels are very much in evidence.”

MOON WITCH, SPIDER KING
Marlon James
#20 Hardcover Fiction
“Sogolon, the antagonist of Black Leopard, Red Wolf, tells her side of the story in Booker Prize winner James’s brilliant second Dark Star fantasy,” our starred review said. The novel “raise[s] powerful questions about whether truth is possible when the power of storytelling is available only to a few.”