Crash Landing on You
Freida McFadden’s latest psychological thriller, The Crash, tops our trade paperback list. It’s a “solid if familiar outing,” according to our review, and that’s likely a feature, not a bug. McFans gave the standalone a six-figure print unit debut, a feat typically reserved for books in her popular Housemaid series.
Raising the Alarm
MSNBC host Chris Hayes “argues that attention is the most valuable and exploited resource in the world today,” according to our review of The Sirens’ Call, which debuts at #2 on our hardcover nonfiction list. It’s “a savvy, if somewhat free-form, meditation on the modern attention economy,” depicting “a battle of wills between individuals’ private psyches and global powers that usurp attention to ‘command fortunes, win elections, and topple regimes.’ ”
Hold On, Hold On
Singer-songwriter Neko Case’s The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You “takes a gut-wrenching look at her difficult childhood and her path toward a music career,” according to our starred review. “With equal doses of grit and self-compassion, Case delivers a riveting autobiography that will fascinate even those who’ve never heard her music.” It lands at #5 on our hardcover nonfiction list, and while she doesn’t shy away from her trauma, writing the memoir, Case told PW, was a form of healing: “I dug deep to remember the good times, and there were more good times than I thought there were—I managed to dig up some really lovely things from childhood.” It also seems to have influenced her day job: “On the new record that isn’t done yet,” she said, “there are some explicitly autobiographical things, which I don’t do very often.”
Wonderful World
TV personality and Magnolia Network entrepreneur Joanna Gaines and illustrator Julianna Swaney team up for The World Needs the Wonder You See, #10 on our children’s picture list. It’s the duo’s third collaboration; 2019’s We Are the Gardeners and 2020’s The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be have sold a combined 850K print copies.
