TikTok Boom
After Tigest Girma received rejections for three novels in five years, she turned to the BookTok community to drum up interest in a book about Black vampires. “I knew if I wanted Immortal Dark to have the best chance at success, I had to take it to the readers and prove there was demand for Black fantasy stories,” she told PW in a prepub interview. “I love how the platform makes marginalized creators so visible that we’re no longer ignored.” Her YA trilogy launch, published by Little, Brown, received a starred review from PW and debuts at #1 on our children’s fiction list.
Star Turns
The week’s new hardcover fiction releases include two novels that received starred PW reviews. At #6 on our list, The Life Impossible is Matt Haig’s follow-up to The Midnight Library, a 2020 Good Morning America Book Club pick that went on to sell 1.7 million print copies. The new book, called “magnificent” in our review, sold more than twice as well in its first week as its predecessor did.
Rachel Kushner, who’s been on the NBA shortlist twice, takes the #13 spot with Creation Lake, a “scintillating story of activism and espionage” in which “an undercover agent embeds with radical French environmentalists,” according to our starred review.
Season’s Greetings
The Cinnamon Bun Book Store by Laurie Gilmore lands at #9 on our trade paperback list. “A small-town bookseller stumbles upon a scavenger hunt in Gilmore’s bighearted second Dream Harbor contemporary,” per our review. The cozy romantic mystery follows 2023’s The Pumpkin Spice Café, which was named TikTok Shop Book of the Year for the U.K. and Ireland. Next up in the seasonally minded series: October’s The Christmas Tree Farm and April’s The Strawberry Patch Pancake House.
NEW & NOTABLE
The Dragon’s Prophecy
Jonathan Cahn
#1 Hardcover Nonfiction, #1 overall
Cahn’s latest continues to draw parallels between the Bible and current events. In a recent interview with his publisher, Cahn compared Donald Trump to Jehu, a king of ancient Israel. Like Jehu, he said, Trump was “called of God, anointed, used of God.”
Lovely One
Ketanji Brown Jackson
#3 Hardcover Nonfiction, #8 overall
The first Black woman to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court recounts her life and career. “I drew my first breath on September 14, 1970, at the dawn of the post–Civil Rights era,” she writes. Still, she continues, “I have faced subtle and overt challenges, largely attributable to my being.”
