This Week's Bestsellers: February 27, 2017

Novel Approach

Lincoln in the Bardo, the first novel by acclaimed short-fiction writer George Saunders, is the #1 book in the country. It’s by far the author’s strongest first-week showing, auguring well for ongoing sales. His bestselling title to date, 2013’s Tenth of December, has sold 120K copies in hardcover and another 90K in trade paper. Here’s a look at debut-week sales for Saunders’s most recent works of fiction.

Saunders’s First-Week Print Unit Sales

(See all of this week's bestselling books.)

Life, Streaming

The #2 book in the country is This Life I Live, a memoir by Nashville singer-songwriter Rory Feek, which details the final months of his late wife’s battle with cancer. Before the book pubbed, HarperCollins Christian Publishing released an audiobook excerpt that Feek featured on his blog; it was streamed 40K times in under three weeks and has received more than 600 comments to date.

Building Sales

Amid the Valentine’s Day offerings and Dr. Seuss titles dominating our Picture Book list, a new book, Mighty, Mighty Construction Site, makes its debut at #7. It’s the latest collaboration from author-illustrator team Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld, whose first book together, 2011’s Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, has sold 889K print copies. That title seems to have gotten a lift from the new book: it’s up 535% from the week before and returns to our list at #15.

Movie Watch

The big-screen adaptation of YA author Nicola Yoon’s first novel, 2015’s Everything, Everything, opens May 19, starring Amandla Stenberg, who played Rue in The Hunger Games. The first trailer dropped February 14, sending hardcover unit sales soaring 707% over the week before, to more than 9,000 print copies. A paperback movie tie-in edition pubs April 4, and a hardcover tie-in follows April 18.

New & Notable

The Refugees
Viet Thanh Nguyen
#25 Hardcover Fiction
The follow-up to Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning debut novel, 2015’s The Sympathizer, collects stories that, according to our starred review, are “simmering with unresolved issues of memory and identity for the Vietnamese whose lives were disrupted by the ‘American War.’ ”

My Life as Eva
Eva Gutoswki
#19 Hardcover Nonfiction
Taking its name from the author’s 7.6-million-subscriber YouTube channel and bearing the cheeky subtitle The Struggle Is Real, this lighthearted book offers self-deprecating pep talks amid photos of the lithe author frolicking in gorgeous locales.

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.