She's the One

Mary Kubica’s new psychological thriller, It’s Not Her, takes the #3 spot on our hardcover fiction list. The day after it pubbed, Deadline broke the news that Gaumont, the production company behind Lupin and Narcos, has optioned the novel for development as a TV series.

Enter Stage Left

Shannon J. Spann makes her children’s fiction list debut at #11 with the YA novel A Stage Set for Villains. It’s a “dark, propulsive fantasy homage to theater,” according to our starred review. “Spann skillfully leverages scriptlike dialogue and punctuated drama structures to flesh out the Playhouse’s vivid world.” Unsurprisingly, the author was a high school theater kid, as she told PW in a prepub interview: “There’s something special about theater, especially for the misfits of the world.”

White-Collar Worker

Rev. James Martin is the founder of the LGBTQ+ Catholic ministry Outreach; a veteran national media commentator and frequent guest of Stephen Colbert; and the author of more than a dozen books. And that’s not the half of it, per the subtitle of his new memoir, Work in Progress, #11 on our hardcover nonfiction list: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest. That penultimate gig came after he received his bachelor’s in economics from Wharton, and before he joined the Jesuit order. “Everyone’s life is a spiritual journey, whether they know it or not,” he told PW in a prepub interview. “So, while some of these stories may not seem explicitly religious, grace was there, mainly in what I was being taught about life.”

The Dark Knight Reimagined

The DC Comics Absolute Universe gives familiar superheroes decidedly unfamiliar backstories. In Absolute Batman, whose second volume lands on our trade paperback list at #6, the Caped Crusader is no longer the alter ego of an eccentric billionaire. Instead, Bruce Wayne is a civil engineer whose Gotham City schoolteacher father was killed in a mass shooting. (Let’s face it: it’s the rare billionaire who makes for a plausible hero these days.) First-week print unit sales for the new release—which, like volume one, collects comic books written by Scott Snyder, illustrated by Nick Dragotta, and colored by Frank Martin—are up 66% compared with those of its predecessor.