Heart of the Matter

The #3 book in the country is the memoir I Can’t Make This Up, in which actor and comedian Kevin Hart discusses overcoming a challenging childhood in North Philadelphia in the 1980s and ’90s. Our starred review called the book, which was written with longtime Rolling Stone contributor Neil Strauss, “inspiring and thoroughly entertaining,” adding that it “brings his readers into his hilarious universe of stories and philosophy.” On June 4, Hart appeared at BookCon with Charlamagne tha God, whose Black Privilege is in its eighth week on our Hardcover Nonfiction list.

(See all of this week's bestselling books.)

Roy Returns

Debuting at #8 on our Hardcover Fiction list, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is the second novel by author and activist Arundhati Roy. Our starred review of the new book praised Roy for her “vision of a bewilderingly beautiful, contradictory, and broken world.” It pubs 20 years after her first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize; she’s published numerous books of nonfiction in between. Print unit sales of the 2008 trade paper edition of Small Things are 71% higher than in the week before; the last time that book cracked 1,000 print copies in a week was in April 2009.

On the Way Up

Atlantic national correspondent and Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden lands at #11 in Hardcover Nonfiction with Huê´ 1968, which delves into a pivotal battle of the Vietnam War, and one of its bloodiest. Michael Mann is developing a miniseries from Bowden’s book, which garnered the author’s best first-week print unit sales since BookScan began keeping records in 2001.

New & Notable

Camino Island
John Grisham
#1 Hardcover Fiction, #1 overall
Our review said that “the opening chapters detailing an elaborate scheme to steal five F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts from Princeton are the best part of this thriller”; after the setup, “the plot follows predictable lines to a conclusion that genre fans have seen before.”

Once and for All
Sarah Dessen
#2 Children’s Frontlist Fiction
Fans of YA powerhouse Dessen “will revel in the familiarity of her steady, empathic writing, as well as her attention to detail,” our review said, in this novel about grief and recovery.

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
Alan Alda
#10 Hardcover Nonfiction
This book exploring the science of communication isn’t as much of a stretch as it might seem for the author, best known for his starring role on MASH: he also hosted Scientific American Frontiers on PBS for more than a decade.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 Camino Island John Grisham Doubleday 121,826
2 Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Dr. Seuss Random House 46,051
3 I Can’t Make This Up Kevin Hart Atria 27,029
4 Al Franken, Giant of the Senate Al Franken Twelve 25,313
5 Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Neil deGrasse Tyson Norton 23,214
6 Come Sundown Nora Roberts St. Martin’s 23,036
7 Into the Water Paula Hawkins Riverhead 20,614
8 See Me Nicholas Sparks Vision 20,311
9 The Woman in Cabin 10 Ruth Ware Scout 20,055
10 Everything, Everything Nicola Yoon Ember 19,651

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.