1. Girl in the Rearview Mirror, by Kelsey Rae Dimberg
2. City of Girls, by Elizabeth Gilberg
3. Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens
4. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong
5. Recursion, by Blake Crouch
6. Becoming Mrs. Lewis, by Patti Callahan
7. Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James
8. Mrs. Everything, by Jennifer Weiner
9. FKA USA, by Reed King
10. Murder in Bel-Air V19, by Cara Black
Though Blake Crouch is probably best known to readers for his breakout Dark Matter, he also wrote the books that became the Wayward Pines series. Now he's back with Recursion, a twisty speculative thriller that posits that it is possible to plant false memories in a person. As he told Mary Louise Kelly on NPR's Morning Edition: "I came across this article about two MIT scientists who were implanting false memories in the brains of mice and actually tricking these poor mice into believing they had experienced a reality that they never experienced. And when I read this, I thought, this is my book." Recursion is also on our time travel table, but I've heard it's only time travel of a sort, so I'm adding a caveat.
Hardcover Nonficition:1. Inheritance, by Dani Shapiro
2. Dark Fantastic, by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
3. Becoming, by Michelle Obama
4. Elderhood, by Louise Aronson
5. Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe
6. Educated, by Tara Westover
7. Underland, by Robert McFarlane
8. Anthony Bourdain Remembered, by CNN
9. Upheaval, by Jared Diamond
10. The Witch's Book of Self Care, by Arin Murphy-Hoscock
It's always nice to see a book sell off our staff rec shelf. Witches, as I'm sure you've heard, are hot again, what with Deborah Harkness coming to Boswell on Wednesday (register here) for A Discovery of Witches and Augusten Burroughs coming out with Toil and Trouble in October. But what got The Witch's Book of Self-Care: Magical Ways to Pamper, Soothe, and Care for Your Body and Spirit onto our bestseller list was that someone bought it off the rec shelf on Saturday and walked over to Starbucks. It caught the eye of a barista (with a slightly different title that we figured out) and she bought a copy too. It's got a four on GoodReads (yes, I know that's Amazon, but I just can't find an NPR piece to link to).
I also wanted to call attention to an interesting book, whose sales pop was for a conference appearance. The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. Thomas teaches at University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. I think a number of our customers would find the thesis of interest, and I'm excited to say we have a few signed copies.
Paperback Fiction:1. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
2. The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai
3. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
4. Vintage 1954, by Celeste Ng
5. Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton
6. Milwaukee Noir, edited by Tim Hennessy
7. The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey
8. The Clockmaker's Daughter, by Kate Morton
9. Dear Mrs. Bird, by AJ Pearce
10. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
It's another week of having read eight of the top ten titles, with all of the said eight having been reported on either here or in our events blog. That's not to say I won't have more to say, but I'll turn to Kate Morton's The Clockmaker's Daughter, which I don't think we've discussed since it was in hardcover. Nice to see it selling even with Jane on summer sabbatical. They call the genre country house goth, and this time, the dark house in question is Birchwood Manor, with two stories told 100 years apart. The hardcover jacket treatment focused on the clock, but the paperback says no, it's all about the daughter. Here's a nice Kirkus review.
Paperback Nonfiction:1. Writing Fiction, 10th edition, by Janet Burroway
2. A Socialist Defector, by Victor Grossman
3. A Suffragette in America, by Sylvia Parkhurst, edited by Katherine Connelly
4. Evicted, by Matthew Desmond
5. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
6. One Summer, by Bill Bryson
7. Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
8. Wildflowers of Wisconsin, by Stan Tekiela
9. Little Book of Restorative Justice, by Howard Zehr
10. Damn the Old Tinderbox, by Matthew Prigge
No new sales pops here, just events holding down our top three, and a number of perennials, including Wildflowers of Wisconsin, which is literally a perennial about perennials. Several books had sales at the Evicted Mobile Design Box book fair on Friday, including Evicted and Just Mercy on the paperback list and Educated on the hardcover list. Ben Austen's High Risers would have made the top ten if we hadn't sold out. If only we'd brought one more. Info about the Evicted Mobile Design Box here
Books for Kids:1. Lulu and Rock in Milwaukee, by Barbara Joosse, with illustrations by Renee Graef
2. Sweeping Up the Heart, by Kevin Henkes
3. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, by Fred Rogers, edited by Luke Flowers
4. Trees, by Socho Piotr
5. The Wicked King, by Holly Black
6. A Piglet Named Mercy, by Kate DiCamillo
7. Squirm, by Carl Hiaasen
8. Dry, by Neal Shusterman and Jared Schusterman
9. You Are Light, by Aaron Bucker
10. Thunderhead: Volume 2 of Schythe, by Neal Schusterman
I thought we'd see nice summer sales for Lulu and Rocky in Milwaukee, a great keepsake from a visit to town, so it's nice to see the book at #1. We just saw the second book in the series, Lulu and Rocky in Detroit, and having just visited Detroit in April, I'm excited about this one for our Michigan neighbors.
The Journal Sentinel book page is on vacation this week - it's planning a trip to Summerfest.
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