The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists

In this gripping coming-of-age odyssey, a young man’s quest to reunite his family takes him on a life-altering journey through the wilds of 1930s East Texas, where both danger and opportunity grow as thick as the pines.

While last week’s bestseller list round-up brought us a batch of fresh titles, this week’s only has one: the newest release by Danielle Steel, who has been writing bestselling romance books for decades.

Part of the reason there are so few new titles here is that the bestseller lists can’t seem to agree. Only one title is in the top ten of all the biggest bestseller lists: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which was a bestseller in 2021 and has gotten a boost from trailer being released for the upcoming movie adaptation.

Publisher’s Weekly has a particularly incongruous top ten list, which includes The Outsiders and Fahrenheit 451. Classic dystopian novels have been appearing on the bestseller lists a lot recently (I wonder why), but I went down a rabbit hole looking for what was happening with The Outsiders. The musical is getting made into a movie, but we haven’t had any updates on that recently. And then it hit me: it’s August. These are both titles that schools across the country are ordering in bulk to teach in English class. Mystery solved!

This list continues to lack of diversity on many levels, including being disproportionately by white authors. Some Indie Bestsellers you should know about are The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali, and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.

To get these numbers, we look at the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; Publishers Weekly; USA Today; and Indie Bestsellers, Fiction and Nonfiction, both Paperback and Hardcover.

Books On All Five Bestseller Lists:

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Books On Four Bestseller Lists:

Accomplice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer (Publishers Weekly, NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

Books On Three Bestseller Lists:

My Friends by Fredrik Backman (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

For Richer for Poorer by Danielle Steel (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT)

Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

Go beyond the bestseller lists with made-for-you book recommendations from TBR, our book recommendation service!

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.