A Firm Grip on Sales
John Grisham’s still got it. Even if it’s likely inevitable that The Exchange: After the Firm won’t live up to its predecessor’s blockbuster showing—The Firm was the bestselling book of 1991, after all—it’s still on top overall this week. While our review said that the book “feels like a somewhat loopy standard-issue legal thriller” that wasn’t “worth the three-decade wait,” readers were clearly eager to find out themselves: the book rang in Grisham’s best on-sale week since the pandemic began, and he’s published seven books since then.
Manga Madness
Every volume of Tatsuya Endo’s popular Spy x Family has hit one of PW’s bestseller lists since Viz Media started putting them out in English translations in 2019, and the 10th volume is no exception, hitting #2 on our trade paperback list. The soaring interest, as with so many manga series, is tied to the title’s anime adaptation, which began airing in 2022. It’s very much part of a trend: nearly half of all graphic novels sold in the U.S. last year were manga titles.
A Little More Maddow
Left-leaning readers reliably turn out whenever a new book by Rachel Maddow hits shelves, and they did so again for her latest, Prequel: an American Fight Against Fascism, which traces the history of extremism and strains of authoritarianism in contemporary American politics. Still, sales weren’t quite as hot as they were in 2019 for Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth, which was the top seller the week it published in October 2019, as the 2020 election was heating up.
NEW & NOTABLE
WORTHY
Jada Pinkett Smith
#3 Hardcover Nonfiction, #6 overall
A year and a half after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards over a joke about Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, the latter Smith lands a hit of her own (sorry) with her memoir.
BEHIND THE SEAMS: MY LIFE IN RHINESTONES
Dolly Parton
#6 Hardcover Nonfiction, #15 overall
The Queen of Country shows off her passion for fashion in a book her publisher says shows “how she developed her own, distinctly Dolly style, which has defied convention and endeared her to fans around the world.”
