Just Jesting

Talk about the good old days—James Patterson turns the clock back several centuries for his latest bestseller, The Jester, published by Little, Brown on March 3. Set during the Crusades of the 11th century, this superstar author's latest (which today unseats Grisham from the #1 fiction slot) is, in the words of PW's starred review, "packed with colorful details of medieval life, bursting with unforgettable characters." Patterson's just completed a seven-city tour on which, says the publisher, he did two to three events daily, "with hundreds of fans attending each." He's even turned into a coverboy of sorts: Book magazine, BookPage, the arts sections of the Seattle Times and the Portland Oregonian, among others. The publisher reports 910,000 copies in print. For the statisticians out there, Patterson's 12 previous novels have racked up an impressive total tenure on PW's charts: 249 weeks, with the Warner Vision mass market edition of 2nd Chance now at six weeks and counting.