This Week's Bestsellers: February 17, 2014

What’s Up, iDoc?

Robin Cook’s medical thriller imagines an app for all that ails you

Robin Cook’s Cell debuts at #12 on our Hardcover Fiction list this week. David McCullough offers high praise: “Rare is the writer who can take us into the fast-paced, miraculous, often bewildering world of modern medicine the way Robin Cook can. Cell is a superbly crafted, full-steam thriller, to be sure, but also a vivid lesson in just how momentous are the advances being made in medicine almost by the day—and how highly unsettling are some of the possible consequences.”

Industry giant Amalgamated Healthcare has developed an amazing healthcare advancement: a cellphone app called iDoc. This app works as a fully customizable personal physician capable of diagnosing and treating even better than a real doctor. It’s networked to all the other users who have downloaded the app, which allows it to learn, to grow, to diagnose more accurately, to determine and monitor treatment, and to collect and analyze health data. But what happens when iDoc begins to execute its duties too well? In Cell we learn that technology like this comes at a price.

Born in Brooklyn, Cook graduated summa cum laude from Wesleyan University with a major in chemistry and a distinction in government. After a stint in the U.S. Navy, he began his ophthalmology residency at Harvard. He published his first medical thriller, Coma, in 1977, and since then he has written more than 30 others. He is currently on leave from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and divides his time between Florida, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

Next month he will be the featured author at the Broward County Literary Feast in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and will do a talk, q&a, and signing at Sunshine Booksellers in Marco Island.—Peter Cannon

Glitter and Glue

It will come as no surprise to Mountains & Plains booksellers that Glitter and Glue, Kelly Corrigan’s memoir about her adventures in Australia when she was 24, is pulling in readers. It debuts this week at #12 on our Hardcover Nonfiction list. This past October, Corrigan, who is now 46, moved MPIBA booksellers at their fall conference in Denver when she presented Glitter and Glue by talking about her parents. While Glitter and Glue started out as a travel memoir, Corrigan said, it turned out to be a book about the person she most admires—her mother—and how their relationship has evolved over the years. When Corrigan was a teenager, her mother summarized the family dynamic by saying, “Your father is the glitter, but I’m the glue.” This statement meant little to Corrigan at the time, as, like many teenage girls, Corrigan was a daddy’s girl whose relationship with her mother was much more adversarial than chummy. In fact, she says, if someone had asked her, when she was in her early 20s, whose voice she would want to hear in her head for the rest of her life, she would have said “some combination” of her father’s, her roommate’s, and Jackson Browne’s. But, she told booksellers, “after 40 years I’ve come around,” and it all started in Australia in 1992, when she worked as a nanny for a recent widower with two young children. Corrigan says she started hearing her mother’s voice in her head, “nudging and advising, cautioning and directing” her as she navigated the foreign terrain of caring for her young charges. “I started to notice the glue under the glitter,” she said. Now, Corrigan, who has two young daughters of her own, says of her mother, “Give me any situation and watch how fast I dial her number.”—Claire Kirch

‘Divergent’ Set for the Big Screen: The Film Based on Veronica Roth’s Trilogy Opens Next Month.

Veronica Roth’s Divergent series continues to dominate bestseller lists; according to HarperCollins, the dystopian trilogy has sold just under 13.5 million copies in all formats and editions in the U.S. (with Allegiant holding the #1 spot on our Children’s Fiction list this week). Now, the media buzz is reaching a fever pitch for what its producers hope will become the next dominant YA screen franchise. The movie adaptation of the first book in the series, Divergent, arrives in theaters on March 21; Summit Entertainment’s final trailer has already been viewed more than 2.7 million times on YouTube since its February 4 release. The movie stars Shailene Woodley (as Tris Prior), whose roles in the film adaptation of Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular Now and the forthcoming The Fault in Our Stars, based on the John Green novel, have contributed to her current YA “it-girl” status. Also figuring prominently are Theo James as Tobias, aka “Four,” Tris’s romantic interest, and Kate Winslet as the villainous Jeanine Matthews. The ingredients for a potential blockbuster are there: in addition to a rising Hollywood star and a cast of battle-ready teenagers divided into competing factions, the film offers a love story staged against life-threatening circumstances. But the verdict isn’t in until the box office numbers are tallied. Divergent’s stars are doing their part to draw audiences to the theater: Woodley and James made a dramatic joint appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on February 3, by zip-lining onto the stage. The actors are currently filming book two, Insurgent, which has a March 2015 release date.—Matia Burnett

Uncommon Marriage: Tony Dungy and his Wife Share their Successes

Super Bowl–winning football coach Tony Dungy (his Colts won Super Bowl XLI in 2007) can add “marriage expert” to his list of career accomplishments. Uncommon Marriage, by him and his wife Lauren Dungy, debuts at #22 on our Nonfiction Hardcover list. Tony Dungy is uncommonly talented: in addition to having a distinguished coaching career (five years at Tampa Bay and seven very good years at Indianapolis) and a sterling career as a player (as star defensive back, Dungy won a Super Bowl ring in 1978 with the Pittsburgh Steelers), he has sold a lot of books. His memoir Quiet Strength (Tyndale, 2007) has sold more than one million copies; Uncommon (Tyndale, 2009), a leadership/advice book, also became a bestseller. Dungy products at Tyndale have sold a total of more than 2.5 million copies. The couple, married more than three decades, have survived pro football and setbacks in life, including the loss of a son to suicide. PW’s review said the book read like “an enjoyable chat with longtime friends.” The Dungys have made media rounds, including appearances on the Today Show, Fox & Friends, ESPN’s Mike & Mike, and NPR’s Tell Me More. The publisher also reports that 2,000 people attended an Uncommon Marriage simulcast at Grace Family Church in Lutz, Fla. Sounds like the Dungys have hit pay dirt. —Marcia Z. Nelson

Top 10 Overall