Worlds Above

Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, the #1 book in the country, is “a cool, captivating story about a successful Irish writer, her friend, and their lovers,” our starred review said. “As always, Rooney challenges and inspires.” It follows the 2020 Hulu adaptation of her second novel, Normal People, and appears to be reaping the benefits of the show’s popularity.

In Clubland

September book club picks include three titles new to this week’s lists, all of which received starred PW reviews.

B&N Book Club
Matrix by Lauren Groff
PW said: “A boldly original narrative based on the life and legend of 12th-century poet Marie de France.”
#6 Hardcover Fiction

Read with Jenna
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang
PW said: “Civil rights lawyer Wang recounts her years growing up as an undocumented immigrant.... Consider this remarkable memoir a new classic.”
#9 Hardcover Nonfiction

Reese’s Book Club
L.A. Weather by María Amparo Escandón
PW said: “A rollicking and hilarious family drama.... This is by far one of the most endearing L.A. novels in recent memory.”
#19 Hardcover Fiction

Heir Apparent

YA author Jennifer Lynn Barnes had already written 20 books when she scored a breakout hit with the twisty 2020 mystery The Inheritance Games, which has sold 88K copies in hardcover. A year later, the trade paperback edition is #10 on our children’s fiction list, and the sequel, The Hawthorne Legacy, is the #7 book in the country, with a debut week nearly eight times as strong as the series opener’s.

NEW & NOTABLE

THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
David M. Rubenstein
#2 Hardcover Nonfiction,
#10 overall
“Rubenstein follows The American Story with another stimulating collection of interviews with prominent historians and public figures,” our review said, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor and scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. among them. “This is a rewarding survey of what makes America tick.”

COUNTDOWN BIN LADEN
Chris Wallace
#4 Hardcover Nonfiction
This narrative by Fox News Sunday host Wallace, writing with Associated Press reporter Mitch Weiss, offers “an engrossing if familiar account of the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011,” according to our review. Though they “break little new ground,” the review continues, “this is a cinematic overview of one of the CIA’s most heralded missions.”