Only one of Nicholas Sparks's four-for-four previous national bestsellers hit the #1 spot on the hardcover bestseller list; that was last year, when The Rescue visited for two weeks. His latest, #5, A Bend in the Road, landed last week in the #2 slot, losing the lead to BlackHouse by Stephen King and Peter Straub. This week, Sparks moves down to #3 as Jonathan Franzen's Corrections takes the top spot after being named as Oprah's latest book club pick. Still, Sparks's books have always enjoyed double-digit bestseller tenures, including a whopping 61 weeks for his debut novel, The Notebook, published by Warner Books back in 1996. Pub date for the new book was September 18, but Warner had scheduled only some local Carolina signings for publication week (the Sparkses' twins were born August 24), with the rest of the tour to begin in early October. On September 18, the author autographed at the Waldenbooks in New Bern, N.C., for more than eight hours, signing 1,500 books in all. That event broke all previous records for the store; only two other Waldenbooks events in the country can boast more books sold: Jimmy Carter in Atlanta and Emeril Lagasse in New York. Sparks will be visiting cities nationwide through mid-November. Total copies in print: 751,000.
With reporting by Dick Donahue.
