Hot Galley Summer

A September piece in Esquire asked, “Are You Cool Enough for the Latest Sally Rooney Novel?,” by way of considering what influencer interest means for literature. While we don’t have the answers, we do know that Rooney’s PW-starred Intermezzo, formerly the summer’s must-have ARC, is the #6 book in the country.

Lesson Plans

The #3 book in the country, The Small and the Mighty, is by former high school government and law teacher Sharon McMahon, known to 1.1 million Instagram followers as Sharon Says So. In the book, she shares “stories of people you may not have heard of, but who changed the course of American history anyway,” she writes.

One notch below, Ms. Rachel and the Special Surprise, written by “Ms. Rachel” Accurso and illustrated by Monique Dong, brings to the page the toddler education videos that have attracted 11.7 million subscribers to Ms. Rachel’s YouTube channel. The telegenic author holds dual master’s degrees in early childhood development and music education.

Sparks Joy

The #1 book in the country is Counting Miracles by Nicholas Sparks, who “brings all the emotion fans expect in his heart-tugging latest,” per our review. Among those fans: Reacher actor Alan Ritchson, recently cast as the lead in a forthcoming adaptation of Counting Miracles. The action star announced the role in an October 3 Instagram post, recalling his first encounter with the Sparks ouevre two decades ago, when he and his then fiancée, now wife, rented The Notebook on DVD: “She fell asleep way before the end. I did not. I was crying so hard, for so long, at that perfect depiction of long, troubled, but unwavering love.”

NEW & NOTABLE

Becky Lynch
Rebecca Quinn
#1 Children's Fiction, #2 overall
Demigod Percy Jackson continues his quest to obtain college recommendation letters from the gods, enlisting pals Annabeth and Grover to help pet-sit Hecate’s polecat, Gale, and hellhound, Hecuba. What could possibly go wrong?

Playground
Richard Powers
#6 Hardcover FictionIn this “dazzling if somewhat disjointed novel set largely on the French Polynesian island of Makatea,” per our review of the Pulitzer winner’s latest, “a mysterious American consortium plans to launch floating cities into the ocean.”