Movie Watch

The movie tie-in edition of The Art of Racing in the Rain lands at #4 in trade paperback. The film, based on Garth Stein’s 2008 novel, opened in theaters August 9 and is narrated by a dog named Enzo, voiced by Kevin Costner.

The conventional trade paper edition has sold 2.2 million copies, and Stein has spun the pup into a cottage industry. The middle grade adaptation, 2011’s Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog, has sold 202K print copies. Four picture books have followed, beginning with 2014’s Enzo Races in the Rain!; all are illustrated by R.W. Alley, who since the 1990s has been the artist for the Paddington books.

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

Domestic Disturbances

Shari Lapena debuts at #12 in hardcover fiction with Someone We Know. It’s a “slyly plotted if anemically peopled page-turner,” our review said, whose “final plot twists prove as implausible as they are surprising. Still, many fans of domestic suspense will be satisfied.”

The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda, another consistent seller in the thriller genre, returns to our hardcover fiction list at #14 after several weeks’ absence. The ending almost writes itself: Reese Witherspoon selected the title as her August book club pick.

The Medium Is the Message

In 2015’s The Light Between Us, Laura Lynne Jackson wrote of her gradual discovery that she is a psychic medium. Her follow-up, Signs, #18 in hardcover nonfiction, is a “stirring guide,” our review said, that “asserts that anyone can learn to understand messages that are sent from the ‘Other Side.’ ”

It’s not the only book by an author who is guided by voices from the beyond. At #11 in hardcover nonfiction is Medical Medium Celery Juice by Anthony William, whose bio explains that he “was born with the unique ability to converse with the Spirit of Compassion, who provides him with extraordinarily accurate health information that’s far ahead of its time.” It’s sold 108K print copies since it pubbed in May.

New & Notable

A Dream About Lightning Bugs
Ben Folds
#7 Hardcover Nonfiction
“In these delightful reflections,” our review said, “singer-songwriter Folds explores the ways in which music shaped his life and offers glimpses into the process of making music.”

Chances Are...
Richard Russo
#8 Hardcover Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls here “mixes his signature themes—father-and-son relationships, unrequited love, New England small-town living, and the hiccups of aging—with stealthy clue-dropping in a slow-to-build mystery about a young woman’s 1971 disappearance,” according to our review.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 The Poison Jungle (Wings of Fire #13) Tui T. Sutherland Scholastic Press 47,973
2 Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens Putnam 47,104
3 One Good Deed David Baldacci Grand Central 27,187
4 We Don’t Eat Our Classmates Ryan T. Higgins Disney-Hyperion 21,022
5 Educated Tara Westover Random House 18,835
6 The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead Doubleday 18,390
7 Dark Age Pierce Brown Del Rey 16,340
8 The New Girl Daniel Silva Harper 14,924
9 Before We Were Yours Lisa Wingate Ballantine 13,792
10 Labyrinth Catherine Coulter Gallery 13,366

All unit sales per NPD BookScan except where noted.