Mercury Ascendant
The #1 book in the country is Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by TikTok phenom (2.4 million followers) Mercury Stardust, aka the Trans Handy Ma’am. Stardust, a trusted and compassionate home maintenance expert, explained her desire to gear her book toward renters in a prepub interview with PW. “Every homeowner I’ve ever met has rented for at least a moment in their life,” she said. “Most renters will never be able to own a home. I wanted to reach people who were often getting left out of the conversation.”
Graceful Entrance
Adalyn Grace’s Foxglove bows onto our children’s fiction list at #1. It’s the sequel to 2022’s Belladonna, which our review praised for its “lush and deliciously eerie prose.” Grace debuted with the duology All the Stars and Teeth and All the Tides of Fate; the first-week performance of Foxglove, her fourth YA fantasy, suggests that her star is on the rise.
Retro Active
Tasting History by Max Miller returns to our hardcover nonfiction list for the first time since April, at #7. Sales surged after Amazon temporarily discounted the $30 hardcover to $7.99; Target quickly followed suit. The book, which, per our starred review, “offers modern recipes inspired by historical fare,” sits comfortably on the cookbook shelf alongside Baking Yesteryear by B. Dylan Hollis, which has been on our list since it pubbed July 25; it’s #5 this week. The subjects may be nostalgic, but the fanbase is decidedly digital: Miller’s YouTube channel has 1.87 million subscribers and Hollis has 10.2 million followers on TikTok.
NEW & NOTABLE
NEVER ENOUGH
Jennifer Breheny Wallace
#9 Hardcover Nonfiction
“Journalist Wallace debuts with a smart take on how parents can help their children thrive,” per our review. Her “sharp analysis illuminates the social and evolutionary pressures that drive achievement culture, and her advice is well observed.”
NECESSARY TROUBLE
Drew Gilpin Faust
#13 Hardcover Nonfiction
“Former Harvard president Faust nimbly blends the personal and the political in this affecting memoir that covers her life from 1947 (the year she was born) through 1968,” according to our starred review. “Faust pulls off a brilliant synthesis, grounding the macro stresses of the period in her quest to distance herself from her culture of origin and sharpen her political sensibilities.”
