This Week's Bestsellers: August 22, 2016

Extra Help

A pair of faith-driven titles are among the highest-selling books in the country this week. Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst, at #2 on our Trade Paperback list and #3 overall, offers support for readers struggling with feelings of rejection and loneliness. Our starred review said that the author, “blending personal stories, a wry sense of humor, and biblical teachings, writes as though she’s chatting with a close friend.” Three earlier

TerKeurst titles—2010’s Made to Crave, 2012’s Unglued, and 2014’s The Best Yes—have together sold more than 600K copies in trade paper.

At #1 in Hardcover Nonfiction and #8 overall, Present over Perfect by Shauna Niequist combines mindfulness, Scripture, and self-help, in an effort to help readers focus on what’s truly important in their lives. “Her style is conversational, friendly, inviting, and never heavy-handed,” according to our review, “making the book accessible to people of all faiths.” Niequist’s most recent titles—2013’s Bread & Wine and 2015’s Savor—each sold about 69K copies in hardcover.

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

Color Her Cautiously Optimistic

The artist widely credited with kicking off the adult coloring book trend, Johanna Basford, has a new title at #5 on our Trade Paperback list, Magical Jungle. And though the book, with 16K print units sold, did less than a third

as well in its first week as 2015’s Lost Ocean did, it’s still the 10th-bestselling book in the country. Print unit sales for her three older coloring books, plus associated postcards and other sidelines, accounted for another 13K print units this week, and her next effort, Johanna’s Christmas, pubs in just two months.

House Style

Powerhouse by James Andrew Miller, an oral history of Hollywood talent agency CAA, is at #11 in Hardcover Nonfiction. Miller is also the coauthor, with Tom Shales, of two earlier media-centered oral histories: 2011’s Those Guys Have All the Fun, an inside look at ESPN, which has sold 116K print copies, and Live from New York, which pulls back the curtain on Saturday Night Live and has sold 52K print copies since its 2015 release.

Miller’s new solo effort launches Custom House, a HarperCollins imprint helmed by Geoff Shandler, who previously oversaw the adult trade division at Little, Brown. Forthcoming Custom House titles include

Audacity (Jan. 2017), New York political columnist Jonathan Chait’s examination of Barack Obama’s presidency; and The Spider Network (Mar. 2017) by David Enrich, financial enterprise editor at the Wall Street Journal, which delves into a banking scandal.

New & Notable

Another Brooklyn

Jacqueline Woodson

#21 Hardcover Fiction

In her first adult novel in 20 years, Woodson “combines grit and beauty in a series of stunning vignettes, painting a vivid mural of what it was like to grow up African-American in Brooklyn during the 1970s,” according to our starred review. The author, also an acclaimed children’s and YA author, won the 2014 National Book Award in Young People’s Literature for Brown Girl Dreaming.

Adnan’s Story

Rabia Chaudry

#18 Hardcover Nonfiction

Our starred review said that Chaudry, the attorney who first brought Adnan Syed’s case to the attention of the creators of the Serial podcast, here provides “a gripping and meticulously detailed account of the case,” with a detailed narrative that “readers new to the story will have no trouble following,” one that also offers “podcast listeners plenty of previously undisclosed material.”

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.