Screening Room

The 2020 trade paperback edition of Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot is the #10 book in the country just as the big-screen adaptation hits theaters. “It was a real treat to see the cast come together,” Brown told PW in a prerelease interview, singling out Pedro Pascal, who voices Fink the fox, among an all-star cast that also includes Kit Connor, Stephanie Hsu, Lupita Nyong’o, and Catherine O’Hara.

Cooking the Books

Stars of song, screen, and social media light up our nonfiction list with their new cookbooks. Topping the list, and the #2 book in the country, is Good Lookin’ Cookin’, a “cheery guide to entertaining,” per our review, from Dolly Parton and her sister, Rachel Parton George. Does This Taste Funny? by Stephen Colbert and his wife, Evie McGee Colbert, is #4 on our nonfiction list and #6 in the country. Our review called it “a bighearted collection of family recipes reflecting their coastal South Carolina roots.” The #9 title on our nonfiction list, The Ambitious Kitchen Cookbook, is the debut of Instagrammer (989K followers) Monique Volz.

Murderous Intentions

Richard Osman, author of the Thursday Murder Club mysteries, branches out with We Solve Murders, which lands at #2 on our hardcover fiction list. “Osman launches a promising new series with this sprightly tale of a father- and daughter-in-law who join forces to take down a shadowy killer,” according to our starred review. Meanwhile, everything’s coming up Osman: the four Thursday Murder Club books to date have sold more than a million print copies, and production has wrapped on the Netflix movie adaptation.

NEW & NOTABLE

The Butcher Game
Alaina Urquhart
#1 Hardcover Fiction, #5 overall
This is the second Dr. Wren Miller thriller from true crime podcaster Urquhart; 2022’s The Butcher and the Wren has sold 254K print copies. Both books alternate narration between medical examiner Miller and an elusive serial killer known as the Bayou Butcher.

Blind Spots
Marty Makary
#14 Hardcover Nonfiction
Johns Hopkins Hospital surgeon Makary delivers an “impassioned cri de coeur,” per our starred review, demonstrating how “the medical establishment suffers from a reluctance to reexamine its own beliefs in light of new evidence.” The book’s “sensational case studies demonstrate the depths of doctors’ intransigence.”