Cutting the Fat, and a Rug

Paula Deen Cuts the Fat, the first release from the independent Paula Deen Ventures, lands at #8 on our hardcover nonfiction list, with 7,072 print units sold. Deen formed PDV in 2013, after Random House canceled her multibook deal amid the controversy surrounding racist comments she made under deposition. In addition to releasing new titles like Cuts the Fat, PDV is mining Dean’s backlist; next month brings The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook, a paperback edition of the celebrity chef’s 1997 self-published title, which Random House picked up the following year. Cuts the Fat represents a bit of a first-week comedown; her previous cookbook, Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible (S&S, 2011), debuted with more than 12K print units sold. But Deen may be taking steps—literally—to regain America’s goodwill: on September 14, she joined Gary Busey, Chaka Khan, and other amateur hoofers on season 21 of Dancing with the Stars.

(See all of this week's bestselling books.)

You Only Live (at Least) Twice

Trigger Mortis, a James Bond novel by mystery and suspense author Anthony Horowitz, debuts at #23 on our Hardcover Fiction list, with 3,213 print units sold. The author made headlines a few weeks before publication when he told the U.K.’s Daily Mail that actor Idris Elba, long a favorite to take over the screen role of Bond from Daniel Craig, was “too street” for the job. (In the same interview, he said he considers Adrian Lester, another black actor, a better choice.) Horowitz is the latest in a long line of writers to pick up the Bond mantle. In 1968, four years after creator Ian Fleming’s death, Kingsley Amis, writing as Robert Marhkam, published the first continuation novel, Colonel Sun. The second, James Gardner’s Licence Renewed, didn’t appear until 1981. Some three dozen (and counting) post-Fleming Bond books have been published to date.

Notable Debuts

The Complete ‘Cook’s Country’ TV Show Cookbook

#1 Trade Paperback

#6 Overall

22K print units

The Photograph

By Beverly Lewis

#8 Trade Paperback

9,300 print units

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

by Salman Rushdie

#11 Hardcover Fiction

7,361 print units

Reckless

by Chrissie Hynde

#17 Hardcover Fiction

3,819 print units

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 Make Me Lee Child Delacorte 51,272
2 The Girl in the Spider’s Web David Lagercrantz Knopf 43,679
3 Gray Mountain John Grisham Dell 29,125
4 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Marie Kondo Ten Speed 26,566
5 Go Set a Watchman Harper Lee Harper 23,780
6 The Complete ‘Cook’s Country’ TV Show Cookbook – America’s Test Kitchen 22,345
7 Secret Garden Johanna Basford Laurence King 19,631
8 Grey E.L.James Vintage 18,906
9 The Escape David Baldacci Hachette/Vision 18,650
10 The Martian Andy Weir Broadway 18,019

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.