Double Your Pleasure
Casey McQuiston’s The Pairing, the #9 book in the country, “delivers all the hallmarks their readers will expect, with lovable queer heroes and zany side characters aplenty,” according to our review. McQuiston’s 2019 debut, Red, White & Royal Blue, was a watershed for traditionally published queer romance and to date has sold 716K print copies. First-week print unit sales soared for the follow-up, One Last Stop, and flagged a bit with the author’s YA romance, I Kissed Sarah Wheeler. Their new book’s debut week is a return to form.
Climbing the Ladder
The #2 book in the country, Apprentice to the Villain, is the second volume in Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s TikTok-spawned romantasy series about the eager assistant to a fiendishly handsome evildoer, characters she introduced in 2023’s Assistant to the Villain. “The cast is as funny, imperfect, and endearing as ever,” per our review, “and the central romance sings.”
The Quality of Mercy
Daniel Abraham (r.) and Ty Franck, who write together as James S.A. Corey, land at #8 on our hardcover fiction list with The Mercy of Gods. On the heels of concluding the popular Expanse series, the coauthors “create a dazzling new world in their masterful Captive’s War series launch,” per our starred review. “In Corey’s hands, world-shaking events don’t preclude nuanced and moving portraits of the people caught up in them. This is space opera at its best.”
NEW & NOTABLE
The Art of Power
Nancy Pelosi
#1 Hardcover Nonfiction
“Former House speaker Pelosi recalls in this uneven memoir how her values both guided her through momentous decisions and made her and her family a target,” according to our review. “Despite some exceptions, including a harrowing account of the 2022 attack on her husband, Paul, this is short on insight into the private person behind the historic figure.”
