Sunday Bestsellers for Week Ending July 21, 2013: Lutz, Klosterman, Walter, Rakoff, Plus Journal Sentinel Review of Rowling and Nilsson Bio.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Last Word, by Lisa Lutz
2. Love Dishonor Marry Die Cherish Perish, by David Rakoff
3. And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
4. The Illusion of Separateness, by Simon Van Booy
5. The English Girl, by Daniel Silva

There's talk that friends of David Rakoff are going on tour for him, but aside from Sarah Vowell talking about it on the Daily Show with John Oliver, I don't have info. Nice sales pop though!

We did have a great time with Lisa Lutz (signed copies available) on Friday. One of my goals is to increase our attendance each time we host and author, and we were pleased to go from 25 last time to 30. Rumor is that something different is planned for the next book. I'm not giving anything away. I do have a new handle though. After Lutz overhearing me recommend Where'd You Go, Bernadette to a mother and daughter who love Lutz, and having her exclaim "I love that book", I realized that I could flip this and recommend Lutz to folks who like Maria Semple. I'll let you know how that goes, but I think it's a good match.

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. I Wear the Black Hat, by Chuck Klosterman
2. Facing Ted Williams, by Dave Heller
3. The Guns at Last Night, by Rick Atkinson
4. Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
5. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, by David Sedaris

Speaking of recaps, we had a great baseball event with Dave Heller and friends (see below) on Monday and Chuck Klosterman (signed copies available) on Thursday. We had about 100 more people than our last visit in 2009 but there were four good reason for this: 1) Klosterman's nonfiction appears to be more popular than his fiction 2) hardcover tours tend to bring out more people than paperback, unless, like with Jess Walter, the book absolutely explodes in paperback 3) we'd only been open for 3 months so our marketing footprint was smaller 4) oh yes, last time he came during Summerfest.

Paperback Fiction:
1. Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
2. Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan
3. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. The Art Forger, by B.A. Shapiro (event this Wednesday, July 24 at the Charles Allis)
5. The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller

Lots of folks have been asking about our event with Barbara Shapiro this Wednesday. It's got a start time of 6:30 pm because the museum closes at 8, and there's a $5 admission to the event, which goes straight to the Charles Allis. One customer came in this week absolutely ecstatic about the book, and that's been the case for lots of folks. The book's had a good-sized run on the New York Times bestseller list. Here's Shapiro listed along with Dennis Lehane and Laura Lippman as one of the best crime books of 2012 in the Boston Globe.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Crossing the Healing Zone, by Ashok Bedi
2. 100 Things Brewers Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, by Tom Haudricourt
3 Worse Than the Devil, by Dean Strang
4. Fenway Fanatics, by Greg Pearson
5. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, by Chuck Klosterman

Now this one is all event memories. Pearson and Haudricourt were two participants in our baseball night on Monday, Strang spoke at the federal courthouse on Thursday at Noon, and Klosterman was at night. Interesting that Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs continues to strongly outperform his other tiles at events. We sold more than twice of this early collection than we did any of his other books. And Ashok Bedi had a great evening as well. It's our first event with Dr. Bedi, and everyone had a great time. Crossing the Healing Zone was recently featured on Lake Effect, and I've had several folks come in talking about that appearance with Stephanie Lecci.

Books for Kids:
1. Boom! Boom! Boom!, by Jamie Swenson
2. The Testing, by Joelle Charbonneau
3. I Am a Bunny, by Ole Risom with illustrations by Peter Scarry
4. Chester's Way, by Kevin Henkes
5. The School for Good and Evil, Soman Chainani

If I haven't mentioned before what a dynamic librarian Heather is at the Cudahy Family Library, may I do so now? She got out 90 people for Jamie Swenson's first picture book, Boom! Boom! Boom! and though I wasn't there (it was Jannis's first solo offsite), I can tell from the sales numbers that it wasn't a family and friends launch. That's one of the reasons we placed Jasper Fforde there for his upcoming appearance on September 11 for his new kids' book, Song of the Quarkbeast. We'll have more infomation soon, but maybe you should mark your caledar now.

In the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins reviews Nilsson: The Life of a Singer-Songwriter, by Alyn Shipton. As one of his wives noted, "There was something tragic in his soul," which alas, tends to make for an interesting story.

Crime reporter Gina Barton reviews The Good Nurse, by Charles Graeber. She reports "The Good Nurse is as suspenseful as any crime novel, even though the case was extensively covered in the media from the time of Cullen's arrest through his sentencing in 2007. Those reports told us what he did. Graeber's book tells us why he did it and how he got away with it for so long."

 And Carole E. Barrowman's Paging Through Mysteries column features her take on J.K. Rowling's newest, noting "I couldn't stop myself from thoroughly enjoying The Cuckoo's Calling." Other titles she covers:
-Visitation Street, by Ivy Pochoda
-Let it Burn, by Steve Hamilton
-Nearer Home, by Joy Castro.