TikTok Boom
Kristen Ciccarelli completes her Crimson Moth duology and tops our children’s fiction list with Rebel Witch. The YA romantasy sold 13 times as many print copies in its first week as book one, Heartless Hunter, did. That title paved the way with a little help from BookTok, and no one was more surprised than its author. “It was not bought in a big, flashy deal,” Ciccarelli told PW. “It was never supposed to be a big book.” The 98K readers who’ve bought Heartless Hunter since it pubbed a year ago beg to differ, and it takes the #12 spot on our list this week, with sales up 35% compared with the previous week.
In Clubland
The new Oprah’s Book Club pick, Dream State, is an “introspective drama,” per our review, in which “two families’ entwined fates are set in stark relief against harsh changes to the climate in near-future Montana.” It’s part of a wave of realistic fiction that addresses climate anxiety. “I didn’t purposely set out to write climate fiction,” author Eric Puchner told PW. “I wanted to write a marriage novel and watch the characters age. You can’t write a novel whose antagonist is time without writing about what’s happening in the environment.”
Paging George Carlin
Arkansas senator Tom Cotton lands at #2 on our hardcover nonfiction list with Seven Things You Can’t Say About China. Cotton can say these things—including “China is an evil empire” and “China has infiltrated our government”—because, he writes, “I don’t fear China. I don’t need China.” The “China has infiltrated our society” chapter outlines influences on Hollywood, higher education, and more, while the “China is coming for our kids” chapter continues the senator’s ongoing excoriation of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
Live, from a New Yorker Editor
Susan Morrison’s Lorne, which our review called “an entertaining account of Lorne Michaels’s nearly half-century reign over Saturday Night Live,” debuts on our hardcover nonfiction list at #5. “Though Morrison focuses more on SNL’s first 25 years than its second,” the review said, “she offers intriguing tidbits about how Michaels steered the show through the aftermath of 9/11 and the first Trump administration (several writers and cast members accuse Michaels of going ‘criminally soft’ on Trump). It’s an engrossing look at the man behind the curtain.” In a recent piece for the New Yorker’s daily newsletter, Morrison outlined the connections between Michaels, New Yorker legends William Shawn and Lillian Ross, and her own book. “Crossing the finish line with the book the same week that ‘S.N.L.’ turns fifty and The New Yorker turns a hundred was never part of the plan,” she wrote, “but it feels just right.”
