Dear Mr. Fantasy

Twelve Months, Jim Butcher’s 18th urban fantasy featuring professional wizard Harry Dresden, is #1 on our hardcover fiction list. Our review notes that the author shifts gears in this installment, “focusing on the character’s struggles, over the course of one year, to come to terms with recent devastating events.” The result is a “more intimate, and ultimately more optimistic, outing.” Stops on Butcher’s book tour included a sold-out event at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego and an appearance at Powell’s in Portland, Ore., where Bridget Schuch and Travis Brueckner, the creators behind the Bricksonian social media accounts, presented Butcher with a custom-made Harry Dresden Lego mosaic.

Age-Old Tale

Former child actor Jennette McCurdy lands at #2 on our hardcover fiction list with Half His Age. It’s “a provocative debut novel,” according to our review, in which a high school senior falls for her creative writing teacher. The review praised the “many clear-eyed depictions of the characters’ transgressions, particularly when they meet for sex and their mutual desire reaches a disastrous boiling point.” McCurdy made a splash with her 2022 memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, which has sold 1.2 million print copies, and is the writer, executive producer, and showrunner on the forthcoming Apple TV adaptation, which stars Jennifer Aniston as her mother.

Best Tressed

Celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton debuts at #5 on our hardcover nonfiction list with Your Roots Don’t Define You, “a glossy yet sincere guide to personal transformation,” per our review. “Drawing from his years styling the likes of Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez, Appleton highlights the links between external and internal change.” While the review found that he “sometimes stretches the haircut analogy to its breaking point,” it also noted that “his conversational tone and enthusiasm for helping others are infectious, and his client stories yield surprisingly tender insights into the complexities of identity and self-perception.”

Making Tracks

Pulling into the #12 spot on our hardcover fiction list, Samantha Sotto Yambao’s The Elsewhere Express is a “high-concept romantic fable,” according to our review. Yambao “delivers a dreamlike, whimsical, and wildly imaginative trip through time and liminal space that occasionally raises more questions than it answers.” It follows the 2025 portal fantasy Water Moon, which our review called a “thought-provoking exploration of regret, choice, and free will.” First-week print unit sales for the new book are up 41% compared with her previous book.