Arc of a Series

Neal Shusterman lands at #4 in children’s frontlist fiction with the dystopian YA novel The Toll. “The stellar conclusion to Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy is a gripping adventure that never stops building momentum,” our starred review said of the title. “With a surprising amount of humor for the large body count, it elevates and deepens the series with a gently optimistic examination of the fine human line between utopia and dystopia.” First-week print unit sales have swung upward with each successive book.

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

Seas the Day

Erin Morgenstern’s 2011 debut, The Night Circus, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. It landed strong, with 15K print copies sold in its first week; release-to-date sales total 791K print copies. Eight years later, her standalone follow-up, The Starless Sea, is the #10 book in the country, besting the previous book’s first-week sales by 9,000 print units. “This love letter to bibliophiles is dreamlike and uncanny,” our starred review said, “grounded in deeply felt emotion, and absolutely thrilling.”

Movie Watch

The Irishman by Charles Brandt, a tie-in to the Martin Scorsese–directed film of the same name, debuts at #18 in trade paperback. The nonfiction title, originally published in 2004 as I Heard You Paint Houses (158K print copies sold), contains the confessions of Teamster Frank Sheeran, who told Brandt, former chief deputy attorney general of Delaware, that he carried out more than 25 mob-ordered hits including that of Jimmy Hoffa. The film adaptation, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, opened in limited release November 1 and will begin streaming on Netflix November 27.

New & Notable

Wrecking Ball
Jeff Kinney
#1 Children’s Frontlist Fiction, #1 overall
Wimpy Kid creator Kinney once again smashes the competition, debuting at the top with his 14th book starring the hapless Greg Heffley.

Triggered
Donald Trump Jr.
#1 Hardcover Nonfiction, #2 overall
The President’s eldest son debuts “with a vitriolic screed against ‘liberal losers’ and ‘Starbucks-chugging socialists in Brooklyn,’ ” our review said. “Loyalists will nod their heads in agreement; skeptics need not apply.”

All unit sales per NPD BookScan except where noted.