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

Flatiron Books, publisher of Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond

“A dazzling fictional debut. . . . Calls to mind both John Irving’s darkly funny tales of family dysfunction and E.L. Doctorow’s evocative dives into the American underworld.” —Megan Abbott, New York Times bestselling writer of The Turnout

One the biggest books of the year is here: Katabasis by R. F. Kuang, the newest from the author of Yellowface and Babel, came out August 26th to a whole ton of buzz. Some bestseller lists are slower than others to respond, so it only made it onto three lists this week, but I am very confident it will be on all five by next week.

In fact, there isn’t a single title that all five bestseller lists could agree on this week. Freida McFadden’s in on four of them, alongside the new edition of Quicksilver by Callie Hart, but most of the bestselling titles I have for you this time around are only on three.

This list continues to lack of diversity on many levels, including being disproportionately by white authors. Some other bestsellers you should know about are The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han (Amazon), The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa and translated by Jesse Kirkwood (USA Today), and Black AF History by Michael Harriot (NYT).

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 Four Bestseller Lists:

The Surrogate Mother by Freida McFadden (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT, Indie Bestsellers)

Quicksilver (Deluxe Limited Edition) by Callie Hart (Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT, Amazon)

Books On Three Bestseller Lists:

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang (Publishers Weekly, NYT, Indie Bestsellers)

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

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (USA Today, NYT, Indie Bestsellers)

My Friends by Fredrik Backman (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.