The Beat Goes On

Debuting at #2 in hardcover nonfiction and #2 overall is I Alone Can Fix it by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. It’s the latest Trump presidency postmortem—see also Michael Wolff’s Landslide, at #3 in nonfiction, and Frankly, We Did Win This Election by Michael C. Bender, at #10—and the duo’s second work on the 45th president, following 2020’s A Very Stable Genius. Our review called their latest “a deeply sourced first draft of history” that’s “long on access but short on definitive insights.” It’s also off to a ripping start compared to its predecessor, moving 91k print units in its first week, up from 53k for Genius.

To Catch a Predator

Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at her explosive 2018 exposé on sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and his sweetheart 2008 deal with prosecutors in southern Florida in Perversion of Justice, which lands at #16 on our hardcover nonfiction list. In a review, the Guardian called it “a vomit-inducing guide to how a criminal with deep pockets and zealous lawyers repeatedly manipulated and circumvented the American criminal justice system.” The book’s strongest sales came from the South Atlantic region, which includes Florida.

NEW & NOTABLE

BLACK ICE
Brad Thor
#1 Hardcover Fiction, #3 overall
Bestseller Thor’s 20th Scot Harvath novel finds the former Navy SEAL cooling his heels in Norway when he comes across a man he believed he’d killed years prior.

FALSE WITNESS
Karin Slaughter
#9 Hardcover Fiction
The murder of a sexual abuser by two of his teenage victims comes back to haunt them as adults in Slaughter’s latest. In our starred review, we said the author is “writing at the top of her game.”

CHRISTIANITY AND WOKENESS
Owen Strachan
#11 Hardcover Nonfiction
Strachan, an associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, rails against wokeness, calling it anti-Gospel.