Whodunit, Mate?

Jane Harper’s Exiles, which our starred review called the “stellar third outing for Aaron Falk” of the Australian Federal Police, lands at #7 on our hardcover fiction list. The series began with 2017’s The Dry and 2018’s Force of Nature; two standalones followed, and now Falk returns with the best opening week yet for any of Harper’s books.

In Clubland

Maame by Jessica George, February’s Read with Jenna pick, bows onto our hardcover fiction list at #10. “George captures the uncertainty, freedom, and anxiety of a London woman’s mid-20s,” according to our starred review of this debut in which Maddie, a British Ghanaian woman whose family has nicknamed her Maame (“the responsible one”), makes her first halting steps toward independence. “The work’s ample magnetism resides in the savvy portrayal of Maddie as a complicated, sharp, and vulnerable person who is trying to figure out adulthood.”

Choosing My Religion

Jinger Duggar Vuolo rose to fame as a teenager, when in 2008 her family became the subject of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting. In her memoir Becoming Free Indeed, #3 on our hardcover nonfiction list, she discusses her disillusionment with the ultra-conservative Christian lifestyle of her youth, and how as an adult she’s embraced a religious practice that aligns with God, rather than anyone who claims to speak for him. “I realized that some of what I had been taught was hurtful and untrue,” she told PW in a prepub interview. “I knew I needed to speak publicly about this because I promoted teachings that I now believe are damaging.”

NEW & NOTABLE

8 RULES OF LOVE
Jay Shetty
#1 Hardcover Nonfiction, #2 overall
The author of Think Like a Monk (510K print copies sold) returns with “a refreshing look at love as a daily practice,” according to our review.

COBALT RED
Siddharth Kara
#14 Hardcover Nonfiction
In what our starred review called a “tour-de-force exposé” packed with “harrowing” details, Kara, a professor of human trafficking and modern slavery at Nottingham University, “uncovers the abuse and suffering powering the digital revolution.”

THE DAVENPORTS
Krystal Marquis
#15 Children’s Fiction
“This stunningly wrought historical fiction debut follows a group of Black teens navigating classism, familial expectations, gender norms, and racism in 1910 Chicago,” per our starred review.