This Week's Bestsellers: October 27, 2014

This ‘Time’, Picoult Steps Out with a New Publisher

In September 2012, Jodi Picoult announced that after publishing 19 books with Atria, she’d signed a three-book deal with Ballantine.

The first of those books, Leaving Time, tops our Hardcover Fiction list this week with just over 37K units sold. Here’s how that figure stacks up against her most recent opening-week numbers.

Two Degrees of Separation

As You Wish, Cary Elwes’s account of the making of 1987’s The Princess Bride, lands on our Hardcover Nonfiction list this week at #3. At #10 is Choose Your Own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris, separating the two actors by a degree of seven.

In real life, they’re only two degrees apart, thanks to their many cinematic connections—several of whom have recent memoirs of their own.

A Booker Bump

Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North makes its debut on our Hardcover Fiction list at #16, two months after its publication, with 3,409 units sold according to Nielsen BookScan. What accounts for the spike in sales, representing a third of all books sold to date? A little thing called the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Below, we take a look at the novel’s trajectory.

Return of the “Kingdom”

Debuting at #21 on our Children’s Fiction list with more than 4K units sold, Garth Nix’s Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen is a prequel to his Old Kingdom trilogy, set 600 years before the first book in the series. It’s his first novel to take place in that world in more than a decade.

Sabriel (1995)

Lirael (2001)

Abhorsen (2003)

Clariel (2014)

Top 10 Overall