Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series was an international hit, and now her Short Second Life of Bree Tanner is doing well in Europe. It was at the top of the list in Germany and #2 in Spain last month. (Also in Spain, the third volume in Claudia Gray's Evernight vampire series, Hourglass, was #9. )
While Stieg Larsson is tearing up the American bestseller list, Nordic fiction is doing well in Germany, too. In the #5 spot on Buchreport's June fiction list was The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell, which takes place in post-WWII Sweden and, like Larsson's Dragon Tattoo, also features a person who suddenly disappears without a trace. Debuting at #2 in Germany is a memoir by a leader of the country's Hells Angels chapter. American suspense is doing well in France this summer: Mary Higgins Clark's The Shadow of Your Smile was sixth on Livres Hebdo's June fiction list, followed by Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow in the seventh slot. Number 1 in France was Marc Levy's The Shadow Thief; it is the author's 11th novel.
And in Italy, Andrea Camilleri's latest, Treasure Hunting, debuted at #1. The 16th installment of Camilleri's popular Inspector Montalbano detective series isn't out yet in the U.S., although Penguin will release the 12th title in the series, The Track of Sand, in October. Camilleri's The Grandson of Negus (not part of the Montalbano series) is #3 in Italy. It is also not yet available in the U.S. American authors couldn't crack Italy's list last month, but a novel called I Am God by Giorgio Faletti—which debuted at #16—takes place in New York City, where a young detective and a photojournalist try to stop a psychopathic serial killer.
