An eclectic group lands on the fiction chart this week. First of the newcomers is Robert Jordan's prequel to his Wheel of Time epic fantasy series, New Spring: The Novel. The 10 books in the series have a combined total of more than 11 million copies in print worldwide. Tor's $750,000 marketing campaign helped launch the book and included a new Web site (www.tor.com/Jordan). Among its features, the site has stories from married couples who met in Wheel of Time chat rooms.
Retreat, Hell, the 10th installment of W.E.B. Griffin's bestselling Corp series about the Marines, lands in the #5 spot with 200,000 copies in print. Putnam reports that the author is doing his first book tour in six years, with stops in several Texas and Florida markets.
It's sweet 16 for Anne Tyler with The Amateur Marriage, published by Knopf this month with a first printing of 225,000 copies. Her 11th book, Breathing Lessons, won a Pulitzer back in 1988. Tyler's media coverage, both reviews and features, is extensive and includes lots of national and regional coverage.
It's the 25th anniversary of one of Barbara Taylor Bradford's most successful novels, A Woman of Substance, and her latest, Emma's Secrets, continues the story of Emma Harte, one of the favorite characters in that earlier book. St. Martin's reports 350,000 copies in print and adds that there are about 70 million copies of Bradford's books in print in more than 40 languages.
