Eat the Clock
Two new cookbooks from big healthy-eating brands emphasize time management. At #2 in Hardcover Nonfiction, and at #4 in the country overall, Skinnytaste Fast and Slow by Gina Homolka includes slow-cooker recipes (in other words, set it and forget it) and recipes that take less than 30 minutes. Her first recipe collection, 2014’s The Skinnytaste Cookbook, has sold 335K print copies in hardcover.
Thug Kitchen 101, new from the f-bomb-dropping vegan duo, debuts at #7 in nonfiction. Subtitled Fast as F*ck, the book includes recipes that are “guaranteed to be faster than delivery,” per the jacket copy. The original Thug Kitchen has sold 486K copies in hardcover since it pubbed in 2014, and 2015’s Thug Kitchen Party Grub has sold 64K print copies.
(See all of this week's bestselling books.)
Capping Off a Trilogy
On the Children’s Picture Books list, amid the Halloween titles and other perennial bestsellers, We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen debuts at #19. It’s the author-illustrator’s third and, he says, final “hat” book. The first, I Want My Hat Back, was named a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book; the follow-up, This Is Not My Hat, won the Caldecott Medal. Much of Klassen’s earliest audience may have aged into early and middle grade readers, but his fan base is growing, as this look at first-week print-unit sales shows.
First-Week Print-Unit Sales for Klassen
| I Want My Hat Back (2011) | 468 |
| This Is Not My Hat (2012) | 2,411 |
| We Found a Hat (2016) | 5,240 |
The Life of Bryan (and Others)
This week’s new celebrity bios hail from the worlds of acting, sports, and music. Bryan Cranston’s A Life in Parts lands at #11 in Hardcover Nonfiction; our review said that “Breaking Bad fans, of course, will fly straight to Cranston’s chapters on script changes made behind the scenes and the reasoning behind Walt’s underwear choices.”
When golf legend Arnold Palmer died on September 25, St. Martin’s moved up the date of his memoir A Life Well Played by two weeks; it debuts at #20 in nonfiction. And at #24, I Am Brian Wilson received a starred review from PW, which said the Beach Boys cofounder’s “emotional authenticity is beguiling as he takes readers deeply into his mind, voices and all, to describe his unique manifestation of musical genius.”
New & Notable
Small Great Things
Jodi Picoult
#2 Hardcover Fiction, #5 overall
When a white supremacist refuses to allow a labor and delivery nurse who is African-American to touch his newborn, tragedy follows. Inspired by a true story.
Filthy Rich
James Patterson and John Connolly
#6 Hardcover Nonfiction
Patterson’s third coauthored work of nonfiction centers on billionaire and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose private jet was nicknamed the Lolita Express.
The Mothers
Brit Bennett
#24 Hardcover Nonfiction
Our starred review called this a “brilliant, tumultuous debut novel” in which the author, a PW Writer to Watch, “deftly juggl[es] multiple issues” and “addresses the subjects—abortion, infidelity, religious faith, hypocrisy, and race—head-on.”
Top 10 Overall
| Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Killing the Rising Sun | O’Reilly/Dugard | Holt | 61,891 |
| 2 | The Girl on the Train | Paula Hawkins | Riverhead | 50,309 |
| 3 | Two by Two | Nicholas Sparks | Grand Central | 49,333 |
| 4 | Skinnytaste Fast and Slow | Gina Homolka | Clarkson Potter | 38,740 |
| 5 | Small Great Things | Jodi Picoult | Ballantine | 36,082 |
| 6 | Harry Potter and the Cursed Child | J.K. Rowling et al. | Scholastic/Levine | 33,026 |
| 7 | Order to Kill | Flynn/Mills | Atria/Bestler | 31,414 |
| 8 | Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen | Simon & Schuster | 31,179 |
| 9 | The Girl on the Train (mass market movie tie-in) | Paula Hawkins | Riverhead | 30,228 |
| 10 | The Girl on The Train (trade paper movie tie-in) | Paula Hawkins | Riverhead | 29,934 |
All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted
