Boswell bestsellers, week ending September 25, 2021

Here's what is selling at Boswell.

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead
2. Bewilderment, by Richard Powers
3. Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney
4. Under the Whispering Door, by TJ Clune
5. The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny
6. Matrix, by Lauren Groff
7. Apples Never Fall, Liane Moriarty
8. The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave
9. The Love Songs of WEB DuBois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
10. The Final Girl Support Group, by Grady Hendrix

The top fiction debut this week is Richard Powers's Bewilderment, which is both longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. That said, if you look at Bookmarks, you can see mixed reviews and even pans, including Dwight Garner in The New York Times and Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal, unusual for a book already getting award mentions. Event Adam Roberts's rave in The Guardian should actually be classified as either positive or mixed, calling it "suffocating" and noting there's "much to admire" but "doesn't reach the heights of his previous work." He compares it to Flowers for Algernon.

I can't let that sit. Let's quote Ellen Akins in the Star Tribune: "This all might sound a bit sci-fi technical, but all the scientific razzle-dazzle, including the details of the planets that Theo elaborately imagines for Robbie, simply underlines the human story at its center - and makes the tenderness between father and son seem so real and heartfelt that the novel becomes its own empathy machine. What's more powerful, though, is how the emotions Bewilderment evokes expand far beyond the bond of father and son to embrace the living world and Robin's anguish at its plight, experienced ever more exquisitely as the experiment progresses."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X Kendi
2. Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
3. Provoke, by George Tuff
4. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
5. Fuzz, by Mary Roach (Register for September 27 event here)
6. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, by Rebecca Donner
7. The Secret History of Food, by Matt Siegel (Register for October 5 event here)
8. Vanderbilt, by Anderson Cooper
9. Unbound, by Tarana Burke
10. Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard

Our new releases about President Trump have taken a bit of a downward sales trajectory, but we saw strong sales of Peril, the conclusion of Bob Woodward's Trump trilogy, with help from Robert Costa. We'll be back in stock shortly. Chris Megerian in Los Angeles Times called it "tedious" - that was a pan, while Ron Elway's positive (per Bookmarks - so nice that I don't have to select the adjective, though as above, I can sometimes question their conclusion) NPR review says that while other revelations are familiar, others have an element of discovery.

One book with nothing but raves (albeit from trade sources rather than the big newspapers is Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement, by Tarana Burke. Kirkus Reviews called it "an unforgettable page-turner of a life story rendered with endless grace and grit." But maybe an endorsement and social media push from Brené Brown is more important that that. She notes: "Sometimes a single story can change the world. Unbound is one of those stories. Tarana’s words are a testimony to liberation and love.” The book is also from Oprah Winfrey's Oprah subimprint of Flatiron.

Paperback Fiction:
1. You Exist Too Much, by Zaina Arafat
2. Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell
3. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
4. Dune (two editions), by Frank Herbert
5. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
6. People We Meet on Vacation, by Emily Henry
7. Anxious People, by Fredrick Backman
8. The Lying Life of Adults, by Elena Ferrante
9. Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno Garcia
10. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

When we get a multi-copy purchase, there are several things that will make it show up or not show up on our bestseller list. How new is the book? Is it selling individually as well? Is it a trade title we can easily get for other readers? How crowded is the list - will the bulk orders push out the titles selling to folks shopping at the bookstore or at events? You Exist Too Much passes on all counts, so allow me to share Gabino Iglesias's review on the NPR website: "Arafat tries to do a lot in this novel, and she pulls it off. This is a story about a woman trapped in the interstitial space between different cultures and religions, but it's also about sexual identity and the effects of fear of rejection and codependency. The main character knows what she wants, but she doesn't know why she wants it — and understands that her family will abandon her if she tells them what she wants. Her desires are always in conflict with what she's been told she should want — a good husband, babies, and a nice house. Her struggle with sexuality pushes her towards cocaine, alcohol, and random romantic encounters, but none of that stops the confusion and pain." Plus Roxane Gay called it "my favorite book of the year."

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Stamped from the Beginning, by Ibram X Kendi
2. Being Lolita, by Alisson Wood
3. Milwaukee River Greenway, by Eddee Daniel
4. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kemmerer
5. The Best of Me, by David Sedaris
6. The Socrates Express, by Eric Weiner
7. New York Times Cooking No Recipe Recipes, by Sam Sifton
8. The Vapors, by David Hill (Join our virtual book club - details here)
9. Voice of Milwaukee Bronzeville, by Sandra E Jones
10. Inspired, by Rachel Held Evans

The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers has been out in paperback since May and this week pops onto our bestseller list. Eric Weiner (The Geography Genius and The Geography of Bliss, a recent WPR book club selection) gets this praise from Lucinda Robb in The Washington Post: "Part travelogue, part soul-searching memoir and part intellectual matchmaker, Weiner’s book packs an extraordinary amount into 287 pages of text. Erudite, funny and frequently self-deprecating, Weiner serves as your interpreter and guide along the way."

Books for Kids:
1. Change Sings, by Amanda Gorman
2. Antiracist Baby Picture Book, by Ibram X Kendi and Ashley Lukashevsky
3. Stamped, by Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds
4. Last Kids on Earth and the Doomsday Race V7, by Max Brallier
5. Stamped for Kids, by Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds
6. Fallout, by Steve Sheinkin
7. Egg Marks the Spot V2, by Amy Timberlake and Jon Klassen
8. Rite of Passage, by Richard Wright
9. Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao
10. Eek Halloween, by Sandra Boynton

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, whose poem "The Hill We Climb" was featured at President Biden's inauguration this week released her first picture book. Change Sings has illustrations by Loren Long. From Booklist: "The positive messaging speaks to building bridges rather than walls and embracing differences, and with each new child encountered, the girl hands them an instrument, inviting them to take up the song. A lovely and loving call to action and kindness."

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Jim Higgins has a feature on 21 books by Wisconsin writers for the 21st Century, including works from Ayad Akhtar, Lydia Barry, Jane Hamilton, and Dasha Kelly Hamilton.

Boswell bestsellers, week ending September 18, 2021

Another exciting fall week at Boswell - here are the bestsellers for the week ending September 18, 2021

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead
2. Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney
3. Apples Never Fall, by Liane Moriarty
4. Matrix, by Lauren Groff (NBA Longlist)
5. The Paper Palace, by Miranda Cowley Heller
6. The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (NBA Longlist)
7. Velvet Was the Night, by Silvia Moreno Garcia
8. Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins
9. Lightning Strike, by William Kent Krueger
10. The Guide, by Peter Heller

Another week of high-profile new releases is led by Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle, his take on a mystery. Bookmarks collected 16 raves and 4 positives on his latest, which also got a great recommendation by Tim at Boswell. From Clifford Thompson in The Wall Street Journal: "The book might be called 'Colson Comes to Harlem,' because in bringing his singular gifts to this storied place, the novelist turns to the crime genre ... In his eminently enjoyable new novel, Mr. Whitehead’s various powers have attained something like equilibrium. The humor and flashes of the old word-wizardry are there, as is the philosophical subtext; race, while not foregrounded the way it is in The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, is woven inextricably into the background, like subtle but effective film music."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Fuzz, by Mary Roach (Register for September 27 event here)
2. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
3. Feed the Wolf, by Jon M Sweeney (Register for September 30 event here)
4. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, by Rebecca Donner (Register for September 23 event here)
5. Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
6. Let's Do Dinner, by Antoni Porowski
7. The Reckoning, by Mary Trump
8. Redeeming Justice, by Jarrett Adams (Register for September 24 event here)
9. The Bomber Mafia, by Malcolm Gladwell
10. Wintering, by Katherine May

It usually seems like we have more bestsellers on the fiction side linked to upcoming events, but nonfiction takes the crown this week with four slots linked to programming. At the head of the pack is Mary Roach's Fuzz - the Fuzz patch give-away certainly helped. We're not quite out yet.

Peter Fish in The San Francisco Chronicle, with his of-the-moment comparison: "Mary Roach is the Deborah Vance of science writing. As played by Jean Smart in the HBO series Hacks, Vance is the raucous, sequin-suited Las Vegas comic who’s made a career mining laughs out of cheating husbands, sleazy boyfriends and botched plastic surgery. And Roach? She’s built her impressive literary presence in part by mining laughs out of topics that fascinate us but also make us squirm. In Stiff, the Oakland author explored what happens to our bodies after we die. (Spoiler alert: nothing pretty.)... Here is Roach’s and Vance’s shared secret: Beneath laughter lies wisdom. What the two grasp is that to truly understand life, death, sex, love and the other mysteries of the universe, it helps to wield some killer jokes."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
2. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo (The current Literary Journeys selection)
3. People We Meet on Vacation, by Emily Henry
4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
5. Circe, by Madeline Miller
6. Send for Me, by Lauren Fox (Register for September 28 event here)
7. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
8. Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman
9. The Book of Two Ways, by Jodi Picoult
10. Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell

Our bestselling Louise Erdrich hardcover (since we opened in 2009, and going back a little further looking at the Downer Schwartz numbers) remains The Round House by a bit, but It won't be too much longer until The Night Watchman tops that National Book Award winner in paperback sales. It becomes a question of when the award is given and how that falls into the paperback release schedule.

For its second week on sale, the paperback of Jodi Picoult's The Book of Two Ways jumps into our top ten. I can't say whether she's done this before, but this is Picoult's Sliding Doors novel, or should I now call it her Midnight Library novel, about a woman who has two possible futures after a crash landing. Karin Tanabe wrote in The Washington Post, "In the mood to contemplate your own mortality? Then Jodi Picoult has the book for you...The Book of Two Ways is a return for Picoult to the themes of her earliest books - motherhood, complicated romantic love...Picoult, at this point in her career, could skillfully build tension in a broom closet, but the best part of this book is not the suspense; it’s the look at the complexity of a woman as she enters middle age." If you love Picoult, her next book, Wish You Were Here, is coming late November. You might wish to put off preordering for a few weeks - fingers crossed.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. The Gift of Years, by Joan Chittister
2. My Meteorite, by Harry Dodge
3. New York Times Cooking No-Recipe Recipes, by Sam Sifton
4. We Keep the Dead Close, by Becky Cooper
5. The Lazy Genius Way, by Kendra Adachi
6. Milwaukee River Greenway, by Eddee Daniel
7. On Story Parkway, by Jim Cryns
8. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
9. The Dressmakers of Auschwitz, by Lucy Adlington
10. Universal Christ, by Richard Rohr

There's a story for just about every book in the top 10. We could shout out We Keep the Dead Close, a true crime book that had strong sales and several great recommendations from Boswellians. Or I could note that Milwaukee Greenway (we're getting this book indexed for our website still) inspired a walk with my friend John along the Milwaukee River on Saturday - we found steps to nowhere that probably were the remnants of a path from the train tracks down to the river, where there were several shacks in the past.

Congrats to Jim Cryns for getting his book On Story Parkway: Remembering County Stadium in our top 10 - he's written all kinds of books, but this is selling the best for us of the last few. It's a good year to have a Milwaukee baseball book - The New York Times just profiled Craig Counsell. On Story Parkway has 152 never-seen-before photos.

Books for Kids:
1. Fast Pitch, by Nic Stone
2. Stamped, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi
3. Defy the Night, by Brigid Kemmerer
4. Egg Marks the Spot, by Amy Timberlake and Jon Klassen
5. The Last Kids on Earth and the Doomsday Race V7, by Max Brallier
6. Lulu and Rocky in Milwaukee, by Barbara Joosse and Renee Graef
7. How to Find What You're Not Looking For, by Veera, Hiranandani
8. Eyes of the Forest, by April Henry
9. Playing with Fire, by April Henry
10. Room on the Broom board book, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

Speaking of baseball, Jenny's been working on a school program for Nic Stone, the author of Dear Martin and other Boswell favorites. Fast Pitch is a middle grade (8 and up) story of the Fulton Firebirds, a girl's softball team and a pitcher, Shenice Lockwood, whose aiming for a regional championship, who is given her Great Grampy JonJon's baseball mitt and uncovers a mystery about his life. Kirkus writes, "This energetic, engaging, complex novel will appeal to readers whether or not they are fans of baseball. A grand slam of an adventure." And Publishers Weekly proclaimed, "Black Girl Magic hits a home run in Stone's latest novel." 

Boswell bestsellers - week ending September 11, 2021 - lots of new releases!

Boswell bestsellers for week ending September 11, 2021

Hardcover Fiction:
1. Beautiful World, Where Are You?, by Sally Rooney
2. Matrix, by Lauren Groff
3. The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All, by Josh Ritter (another debut)
4. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
5. The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny
6. The Magician, by Colm Tóibín (another debut)
7. We Were Never Here, by Andrea Bartz
8. In the Middle of Others, by Leila Slimani
9. The Nature of Middle Earth, by JRR Tolkin
10. The Heron's Cry, by Ann Cleeves (another debut)

Five debuts in hardcover fiction this week in our top 10. This is where the action is. Topping the newcomers is Sally Rooney's third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You? It's unusual to see a publisher change after a breakout. Sometimes the new contract was already signed. There's always the case that an Irish author is more closely tied to the UK than the American publisher and FSG's publisher is Mitzi Angel, who came from Faber and Faber, Rooney's UK publisher. Who knows? I'm just watching from the peanut gallery. Over 50 reviews are indexed for this at Bookmarks.

Lauren Groff's Matrix has fewer reviews on Bookmarks (16), but it looks like that is due to an American launch, rather than a worldwide one. She does have a lot of raves. Ron Charles writes in The Washington Post: "Though Matrix is radically different from Groff’s masterpiece, Fates and Furies, it is, once again, the story of a woman redefining both the possibilities of her life and the bounds of her realm... Although there are no clunky contemporary allusions in Matrix, it seems clear that Groff is using this ancient story as a way of reflecting on how women might survive and thrive in a culture increasingly violent and irrational."

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
2. Feed the Wolf (Register for September 30 virtual event here)
3. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days (Register for September 23 virtual event here)
4. On Freedom, by Maggie Nelson
5. The Afghanistan Papers, by Craig Whitlock
6. Poet Warrior, by Joy Harjo
7. Misfits, by Michaela Cole
8. History Makers, by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
9. American Experiment, by David Rubenstein
10. Noise, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

Actually half this list is debuts as well, only the numbers at the top are lower than fiction for the newcomers and the Journal Sentinel's History Makers Bucks chronicle isn't first-week new - it's just as fast as we could get it (Call to order it). Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo's Poet Warrior gets six reviews, all but one raves, but it strikes me that four of the six are the trades (PW, Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus) and the only traditional review is from Marion Winik in the Star Tribune. Don't know why, though I must acknowledge the heavy release schedule. Gabino Iglesias on the NPR website calls the memoir "a wonderful hybrid text that mixes memoir, poetry, songs, and dreams into something unique that opens a window into the most important events of Harjo's life and invites readers to reconnect with themselves - as well as with the land and the knowledge of their people."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich
2. Dune (two editions), by Frank Herbert
3. Circe, by Madeline Miller
4. Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart
5. Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
6. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
7. Send for Me, by Lauren Fox (Register for September 28 event here)
8. People We Meet on Vacation, by Emily Henry
9. Dune Messiah, by Frank Herber
10. Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman

Not a lot of turnover here, but even without the once grand pops of paperback releases (the paperback prices are creeping up faster than hardcovers, making paperbacks less of a deal, exacerbated at Boswell because we discount a lot of hardcovers, but not many paperbacks), there's also the issue that publishers tend to release high profile paperback reprints from January to July more than in the fall. We close to hosting a virtual event for Richard Osman, but our format fell apart when Osman's schedule was condensed. Alas. Rochelle O'Gorman writes of The Thursday Murder Club in the Christian Science Monitor: "Humor is everywhere, and it is very British - smart and a little prickly - but it would not be lost on an American audience. The wit and the plot will bring readers back for more of this series." This paperback release was August, the traditional slot for a series whose hardcovers come out in September (The Man Who Died Twice). Lately we're seeing them faster, but this is the way they used to do them, with the paperback coming out 30-60 days in advance of the next hardcover.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. The Displaced, edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen
2. My Meteorite, by Harry Dodge
3. Milwaukee River Greenway, by Eddee Daniel
4. The Best of Me, by David Sedaris (Tickets for Riverside appearance on December 10 here)
5. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
6. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
7. Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah
8. Undocumented Americans, by Karla Corneyjo Villavicencio
9. Built for This, by The Athletic
10. Reaganland, by Rick Perlstein

We've got an actual first-week pop in paperback nonfiction with David Sedaris's The Best of Me, with his new release, A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020), coming out in October. Hey, it's another paperback 30 days in advance! As noted, the Sedaris appearance at the Riverside now looks firm at December 10, 2021. It was originally scheduled for 2020 spring. In addition to this rescheduling, there are a lot of new dates - my friends at fellow bookstores have been promoting. From Andrew Sean Greer writing about The Best of Me in The New York Times Book Review last year: " Is Amy here? Yep. His mom? His dad? The Rooster who becomes The Juicester? Bien sûr. In fact, this book is all about his family and … all right, I’ll say it: love."

Books for Kids: 

1. Willodeen, by Katherine Applegate
2. The First 100 Words, by Priddy
3. Everywhere Babies, by Susan Meyers
4. Giraffes Can't Dance, by Giles Andreae
5. Baby Faces, from DK
6. Fallout, by Steve Sheinkin (Register for September 14 virtual school visit here - open to the public)
7. Indigenous People's History of the United States for Young People, by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz
8. Fast Pitch, by Nic Stone
9. Eyes of the Forest, by April Henry
10. It's Not the Stork, by Robie H Harris

I wish a switch was thrown and on the first of September, families streamed into Boswell to buy our favorite kids books in bestseller quantities, but that's not the case. However, something does happen, which is that our school visits (all but one virtual this fall) start having an impact. Like regular author tours, these school visits are scheduled by publishers not just to have the initial pops but to prime many of these titles for holiday sales later. Our first big appearance was for Katherine Applegate, whose new book is Willodeen. Booklist writes: " You know you're in for a treat with an Applegate fantasy, but when she dreams up hummingbears - tiny, winged bears that nest in bubbles - it's instantly catapulted into irresistible territory. For Willodeen, who happens to have a flightless hummingbear as a pet, her heart is far more occupied with the welfare of unlovable creatures, namely the widely detested screechers - grumpy combo of skunk (odor), warthog (snout, tusks), beaver (tail), and porcupine (quills)."

Over at the Journal Sentinel, I missed giving a shout out to Jim Higgins' piece on which Wisconsin writers appear in the New Yale Book of Quotations. 

Coming up next, four Boswell events on the docket.

Boswell bestsellers, week ending September 4, 2021

Boswell bestsellers, week ending September 4, 2021

Hardcover Fiction:
1. The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny
2. Lightning Strike, by William Kent Krueger
3. The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave
4. A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins
5. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
6. The Final Girl Support Group, by Grady Hendrix
7. The Comfort of Monsters, by Willa C Richards
8. Raft of Stars, by Andrew J Graff
9. Shoulder Season, by Christina Clancy
10. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

The top debut this week is Paula Hawkin's A Slow Fire Burning, following Into the Water and the megahit Girl on the Train. To me, four years is a long time for thrillers, but she can't beat Gillian Flynn. It's been nine years since Gone Girl. Malcolm Forbes called her latest a "compulsively readable whodunit" in the Star Tribune. The story focuses on three women who might have killed the man in the houseboat, repeated stabbed with a smile carved into his face. As Forbes notes, "The source of its narrative force is its compellingly unpredictable characters. As Miriam (one of the protagonist/suspects puts it, 'We all have our monstrous moments.'"

Hardcover Nonfiction:
1. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, by Rebecca Donner (Register for this now-virutal September 23 event here)
2. Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
3. Giannis, by Mirin Fader
4. Refugee High, by Elly Fishman
5. Hero of Two Worlds, by Mike Duncan
6. Weekday Vegetarians, by Jenny Rosenstarch
7. Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman
8. The Afghanistan Papers, by Craig Whitlock
9. How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith
10. Finding the Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard

Published on the date of the final withdrawal, The Afghansitan Papers: A Secret History of the War, is written by three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post. The book was reviewed with Carter Malkesian's American War in Afghanistan in The New York Times by Fredrik Logevall. He writes: "The two volumes constitute a powerful one-two punch, covering as they do the key developments in the war and reaching broadly similar conclusions, but with differing emphases. Malkasian provides greater detail and context, while Whitlock’s United States-centric account is fast-paced and vivid, and chock-full of telling quotes. Both authors paint a picture of an American war effort that, after breathtaking early success, lost its way, never to recover."

Paperback Fiction:
1. The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich (Book Club authorless discussion on October 4)
2. People We Meet on Vacation, by Emily Henry
3. Dune (two paperback editions), by Frank Herbert
4. Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
5. The Overstory, by Richard Powers
6. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe 

7. The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
8. Lakewood, by Megan Giddings
9. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
10. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong

Several authors on the paperback top ten have new releases coming this fall. Louise Erdrich's The Sentence is a ghost story mystery set in an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, much like the real-life Birchbark Books. It comes weeks after the In-Store Lit Group discusses The Night Watchman. The follow-up to Richard Powers's The Overstory is Bewilderment, a story about an astrophysicist set in Madison, Wisconsin. Pub date for that one is September 21, just two weeks away! Also out that day is Under the Whispering Door, the next novel for adults by TJ Klune, author of the bestselling The House in the Cerulean Sea, is about a newly dead man who is given a week to live out his life before crossing over. I think I got that right - we already have a great rec from Boswellian Jen Steele.

Paperback Nonfiction:
1. Indigenous People's History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz
2. Banned Book Club, by Kim Hyun Sook
3. Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah
4. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
5. Life in Short, by Dasha Kelly
6. The Vapors, by David Hill
7. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
8. Epic Hikes of the World, by Lonely Planet
9. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk
10. American Nations, by Colin Woodard

Speaking of the In-Store Lit Group, which hasn't met in store for the last 18 months, our November selection is The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice, a nonfiction book (I like to include at least one narrative nonfiction title) by David Hill. It is crime history of Hot Springs, which once looked like it might be the Southeast equivalent of Las Vegas, but it's also a family story, so in that way, it reminds me of Rich Cohen's work (Sweet and Low et al). 

From Jonathan Miles's New York Times review which convinced me to read it: "Most mob stories — even The Godfather — are essentially business stories, their dramatic conflicts arising from structure, succession and competition (and their appeal, I suspect, deriving from their portrayal of capitalism without its inert ingredients). In The Vapors, Madden and Harris’s rise is fueled by palm-greasing, ballot-stuffing, judge-bribing, loophole-hunting and various other tricks and ploys designed to keep the feds and rival mobsters at bay. The closest we get to a mob hit is when Frank Costello, the New York crime boss, visits the Maddens for dinner, and, after a single taste, insults Agnes Madden’s spaghetti and meatballs. 'Agnes did not hesitate,' Hill writes. 'She picked up the bowl and dumped it right on Costello’s head.' Southern hospitality has its limits."

Books for Kids:
1. Stamped, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi
2. Ghostly Tales of Milwaukee, by Anna Lardinois (Register for October 2, 11 am outdoor event)
3. Rite of Passage, by Richard Wright
4. Egg Marks the Spot V2, by Amy Timberlake/Jon Klassen (Register for September 15, 2 pm virtual event with Timberlake)
5. Skunk and Badger V1, by Amy Timberlake/Jon Klassen
6. Mindful Mr Sloth, by Katy Hudson
7. Tomatoes for Neela, by Padma Lakshmi
8. Any Way the Wind Blows V3, by Rainbow Rowell
9. Ace of Spades, by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
10. Take Me With You When You Go, by David Levithan

The kids numbers are still a bit low before school starts and our schedule is crowded with virtual (and one in-person) school visits, but Ace of Spades has been selling consistently well since its spring release to deserve special mention. Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé is a contemporary YA thriller (and Indie Next pick) about two students attempting to confront an anonymous bully. School Library Journal noted in their star review that "readers will love this thriller-mystery reminiscent of Gossip Girl and Get Out. The plot keeps readers guessing."

Over at the Journal Sentinel, Book and Arts Editor Jim Higgins profiles two book about Marquette, Black Marquette: In Their Own Words, and Linked by Ink: Marquette Journalism Grads Reflect on Six Decades.