Two for the Road

Fans currently suffering through droughtlander—the long months between seasons of the time-traveling romance series Outlander—can quench their thirsts with Clanlands, the #5 book in the country. Full of photos and Caledonian banter, it follows Sam Heughan, aka Jamie, the show’s ginger heartthrob, and Graham McTavish, who plays Dougal, Jamie’s war chieftain uncle, as they travel across their native Scotland by camper van, motorbike, kayak, and more, drinking whisky and talking history. The book is a companion to the duo’s forthcoming eight-episode travelogue, Men in Kilts.

Hope and Change

David Michaelis’s Eleanor, which our starred review called “a compulsively readable and exhaustively researched portrait of one of the most admired women of the 20th century”—Eleanor Roosevelt—debuts at #16 in hardcover nonfiction. It pubbed October 6, and about a month later Michaelis appeared on CBS Sunday Morning for a discussion filmed in Hyde Park, N.Y., at Roosevelt’s Val-Kill retreat. The segment, which aired two days before the election, also showed archival footage of the onetime first lady speaking about the importance of the word hope.

In Clubland

November’s Read with Jenna pick, White Ivy by Susie Yang, lands at #14 in hardcover fiction. It’s an “excellent debut,” our review said, in which “nonchalant deceit and reluctant honesty undergird generational struggle.” Yang, like her protagonist, was cared for by her grandparents in China until reuniting with her parents at age five and moving to the U.S. Though the novel is not autobiographical, the author told EW, “I used the dichotomy I know, of living in the States but spending summers with my relatives in China, and having that surreal experience of being viewed as an outsider there.”

NEW & NOTABLE

FORTUNE AND GLORY
Janet Evanovich
#1 Hardcover Fiction, #2 overall
Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum’s 27th outing is a homecoming of sorts: she and her mystery series return to S&S, where they began with 1994’s One for the Money.

THE BEST OF ME
David Sedaris
#5 Hardcover Nonfiction
“Sedaris’s brilliant knack for observational humor is on full display,” our starred review said. “This is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, while Sedaris’s fans will enjoy rediscovering old favorites.”

INSTANT KARMA
Marissa Meyer
#21 Children’s Fiction
The Lunar Chronicles author writes her first contemporary YA rom-com, which offers “a satisfying romance,” our review said, “and an unsanctimonious lesson about the importance of changing one’s ideas about oneself and others when needed.”