How Pink Thinks

The week’s biggest debut, When: The Scientific Secrets of Good Timing by Daniel H. Pink, is the #10 book in the country. Pink’s written several books on work, management, and behavioral science—his most recent two have sold a combined 824K print copies—and each title has had a better first week than the one before.

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

Domestic Drama

The reading public’s appetite for psychological thrillers continues, with two books in the subgenre debuting on our lists this week. In The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, #8 in hardcover fiction, a woman is obsessed with her ex-husband’s new fiancée. Our starred review said the book’s “unforgettable twists lead to shocking revelations all the way through the epilogue.”

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani, which won the France’s Prix Goncourt in 2016, debuts at #18 in trade paper. It begins with the words, “The baby is dead,” then backtracks to explain the events leading up to the tragedy.

Career Arc

Neal Shusterman is the author of numerous series and standalone titles, mostly for young adults. He won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for Challenger Deep. 2016’s Scythe, a Printz Award finalist that has sold 69K copies in hardcover, launched the Arc of a Scythe series, which is set in a future when humanity has conquered death. Thunderhead, second in the series, debuts at #7 in children’s and YA fiction; it sold twice as many print copies in its first week as its predecessor did. Our starred review said the new book interweaves “heady questions of morality, responsibility, loyalty, and power.”

New & Notable

The Immortalists
Chloe Benjamin
#5 Hardcover Fiction
Benjamin’s second novel (after 2014’s The Anatomy of Dreams) is an “imaginative and moving family saga,” our starred review said, that kicks off in 1969 with four siblings learning the dates of their deaths from a Lower East Side psychic.

Dear Girl
Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Paris Rosenthal, illus. by Holly Hatam
#7 Picture Books
Children’s book author Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who died in 2017, and Paris, her daughter, offer encouragement to young girls in a book our review called “generally empathetic and up-to-the-minute.”

Love
Matt de la Peña, illus. by Loren Long
#11 Picture Books
A diverse array of families depict the title concept in situations that aren’t always picture-perfect. “People often talk to children about love,” our starred review said. “In these pages, they can see and feel what it’s like.”

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint ISBN Units
1 Fire and Fury Michael Wolff Holt 9781250158062 191,826
2 Dog Man and Cat Kid (Dog Man #4) Dav Pilkey Graphix 9780545935180 26,936
3 No Middle Name Lee Child Dell 9780399593598 24,892
4 A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L’Engle Square Fish 9780312367541 24,244
5 The Sun and Her Flowers Rupi Kaur Andrews McMeel 9781449486792 20,793
6 The Woman in the Window A.J. Finn Morrow 9780062678416 20,276
7 Milk and Honey Rupi Kaur Andrews McMeel 9781449474256 18,315
8 Wonder R.J. Palacio Knopf 9780375869020 17,388
9 You Are a Badass Jen Sincero Running Press 9780762447695 17,307
10 When Daniel H. Pink Riverhead 9780735210622 16,963

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.