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BookTok has been good to Taylor Jenkins Reid, powering her novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo to more than 1.5 million copies sold, according to NPD BookScan. Her latest, Carrie Soto Is Back, about an aging tennis star who returns from retirement to try to reclaim her record from a younger contender, got a strong start itself, pushing 34,427 units in its first week, nearly 8K more copies than Reid’s previous book, Malibu Rising, sold in its first week. Despite the TikTok of it all, the increase is actually on trend for Reid: first-week sales for her titles have increased by 8K–16K copies consistently between books ever since the hardcover edition of Evelyn Hugo sold just over 1,300 copies in its debut week.
Spooky Season
It’s mid-September, and the Halloween sales for kids’ books have begun. Two books based on the 1993 film Hocus Pocus (starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy as three witches who come back to life on Halloween) hit the children’s fiction list last week. Eric Geron’s The Hocus Pocus Spell Book (#3) sold 12,346 copies, and A.J. Jantha’s Hocus Pocus: The Illustrated Novelization (#4) sold 10,275. The children’s overall list saw four Halloween titles hit the list last week as well: Aaron Blabey’s Pig the Monster (#9), James and Kimberly Dean’s Pete the Cat: Trick or Pete (#10), Sandra Boynton’s Spooky Pookie (#14), and Pop-Up Peekaboo! Pumpkin from DK (#15) all hit the top 20, selling nearly a combined 27,000 print copies.
Series Starter
Coming in at #3 on the children’s list was Belladonna by Adalyn Grace, kicking off a YA series of the same name to the tune of 7,227 copies. The story follows 19-year-old Signa Farrow, who forms an alliance with Death in an alternate-world industrial-era England after a series of near-death experiences and the deaths of nearly everyone who’s ever taken her under their care. “While a predictable plot and dropped threads occasionally distract from Grace’s lush and deliciously eerie prose,” our reviewer wrote, “Signa’s burgeoning attraction to both Death and Sylas lends heady romance to the ethereal read.”
NEW & NOTABLE
THE INK BLACK HEART
Robert Galbraith
#2 Hardcover Fiction, #9 overall
J.K. Rowling’s adult thriller as Robert Galbraith, the latest in her Cormoran Strike series, which has drummed up some controversy, follows Strike and business partner Robin Ellacott as they seek to solve the murder of an animator after her cartoon was accused of ableism, racism, and transphobia, and she found herself “persecuted by a mysterious online figure.”
THE GREAT RESET
Alex Jones
#2 Hardcover Nonfiction, #11 overall
Far-right media figure and conspiracy theorist Jones’s new book, billed as an analysis of “the global elite’s international conspiracy to enslave humanity and all life on the planet,” sold more than 30K copies in its first week despite Jones being convicted last month in the defamation lawsuit brought against him by parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims.
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