This Week's Bestsellers: March 12, 2018

Food Fight

YouTuber Lauren Toyota, whose Hot for Food channel has 400K subscribers, debuts at #6 in trade paperback with her first cookbook, Vegan Comfort Classics. The 101 recipes eschew virtuous grain bowls in favor of (vegan) mac and cheese onion rings and (vegan) cinnamon rolls, because, as she writes, “You want French fries for dinner? Duh! Who doesn’t?”

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

In hardcover nonfiction, a pair of veteran diet authors emphasize health benefits. At #1 in hardcover nonfiction and #5 overall, Food by Eat Fat, Get Thin author Mark Hyman offers “nothing new,” our review said, but “remains a sensible, anti-inflammatory, whole-food/‘real food’ approach.”

The Fast Metabolism Diet author Haylie Pomroy has the #7 hardcover nonfiction book, Metabolism Revolution, whose subtitle promises that those who follow its program will “lose 14 pounds in 14 days and keep it off for life.”

Tales from the Darkside

The posthumously published I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, by journalist Michelle McNamara, recounts her search for the identity of the Golden State Killer of the 1970s and ’80s. It debuts at #5 in hardcover nonfiction. McNamara, who died in 2016, was married to actor Patton Oswalt; he wrote the afterword, and Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn contributed the introduction. The book has received abundant positive attention, including our starred review: “With its exemplary mix of memoir and reportage, this remarkable book is a modern true crime classic.”

His Kind of Town

Chicago, David Mamet’s first novel in 20 years, debuts at #20 in hardcover fiction and returns the playwright and screenwriter to the 1920s Chicago setting of Brian De Palma’s film The Untouchables, which Mamet wrote. The book sold best in its namesake city, with Chicago-area shoppers buying twice as many print copies as did residents of the next-strongest designated market area, Los Angeles.

New & Notable

I’ve Been Thinking...
Maria Shriver
#2 Hardcover Nonfiction, #6 overall
Though our review called this collection “more sincere than eloquent,” it concluded that it “will please Shriver’s established readership as well as new readers looking for inspiration.”

Raspberry Danish Murder
Joanne Fluke
#8 Hardcover Fiction
Fluke’s 22nd Hannah Swensen culinary mystery garners the author’s best first-week print-unit sales in years, with a plot that our review called “flaky” while noting that “this installment contains enough recipes to satisfy the most enthusiastic baker.”

The Hush
John Hart
#10 Hardcover Fiction
Two-time Edgar winner Hart returns with a supernatural-tinged thriller that “works best for readers who are already invested in Johnny Merrimon,” the central character in 2010’s The Last Child.

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per NDP BookScan except where noted.