Claiming His Place

Mark Greaney’s 2009 debut thriller, The Gray Man, launched the series of the same name; two years later, he was tapped to coauthor the Jack Ryan series with Tom Clancy. They wrote three books together, and, after Clancy’s death, Greaney wrote four more. He continued his own series all the while, and in February 2017 announced he was leaving Jack Ryan behind. His first Gray Man book since then, Agent in Place, debuts at #8 in hardcover fiction with the best first-week sales for the series to date.

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

Meet and Greet

The ALA announced its Youth Media Awards, which include the Newbery and Caldecott, February 12. Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly’s Hello, Universe debuts at #16 in children’s and YA frontlist fiction, with print unit sales up 59% from the week before.

The Caldecott Medalist, Matthew Cordell, saw a significant improvement in sales for Wolf in the Snow, though the run-up to the annual Read Across America promotions and associated surge of Dr. Seuss titles kept it from the current picture book list.

TV Watch

The police procedural Instinct, starring Alan Cumming, premieres March 11 on CBS. It’s based on 2017’s Murder Games by James Patterson and Howard Roughan, and features a first for a broadcast TV drama: the lead character is gay and has a husband. He’s also “a fuddy-duddy professor, a bit of a dandy, [and] a former spy [who] drives a motorbike,” Cumming said at a promotional event for the show. “[His sexual orientation is] the fourth or fifth most interesting thing about the character.” The Instinct TV tie-in debuts at #9 in trade paper.

New & Notable

Educated
Tara Westover
#4 Hardcover Nonfiction
In this “searing debut memoir,” our starred review said, “a girl claws her way out of a claustrophobic, violent fundamentalist family into an elite academic career.”

Sunburn
Laura Lippman
#18 Hardcover Fiction
According to our starred review, this “tale of the gray area between betrayal, lust, and murder” shows “Lippman at her observant, fiercest best, a force to be reckoned with in crime fiction.”

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L’Engle Square Fish 35,594
2 Green Eggs and Ham Dr. Seuss Random House 33,248
3 Dog Man and Cat Kid (Dog Man #4) Dav Pilkey Graphix 25,379
4 One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish Dr. Seuss Random House 24,951
5 The Great Alone Kristin Hannah St. Martin’s 23,097
6 Fifty Fifty Patterson/Fox Little, Brown 22,798
7 The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss Random House 19,959
8 12 Rules for Life Jordan B. Peterson Random House Canada 19,593
9 Fire and Fury Michael Wolff Holt 17,785
10 Wonder R.J. Palacio Knopf 15,987

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.