He’s the Boss

Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, Born to Run, is the #1 book in the country overall, with 117K prints copies sold in its first week; it was one of the year’s most highly anticipated releases. Things were a lot different at the start of Springsteen’s career: his first album, 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., caught the attention of major rock critics including Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau, but it took some time to find its audience. In its first year, it reportedly sold just 25K copies, and it took almost six years for the album to go gold.

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

Back to the Bestseller List

Debuting at #4 in Hardcover Nonfiction, The Universe Has Your Back, the latest self-help book by Gabrielle Bernstein, did well enough in one week to be among Hay House’s five top-selling titles for the year to date. Bernstein has been on our list before, with 2013’s May Cause Miracles and 2014’s Miracles Now, but neither book enjoyed as strong a first week as Universe.

Oprah Winfrey recently named Bernstein to her SuperSoul100 list of influencers, a group that also includes Elizabeth Gilbert, whose 2015 self-help title, Big Magic, debuts on our trade paper list this week at #11. For a deeper look at the self-help category, look for our feature in the October 17 issue.

Against—and with—the Grain

Pasta: friend or foe? Depends on whom you ask. Blogger Danielle Walker has made her name promoting gluten- and dairy-free paleo recipes, selling a combined 417K copies in trade paper of 2013’s Against All Grain and 2014’s Against All Grain: Meals Made Simple. Her first hardcover title, Against All Grain: Celebrations, debuts this week at #5 on that list.

Representing Team Pasta, The Healthiest Diet on the Planet by physician John McDougall, with recipes by his wife, Mary McDougall, debuts at #18 in Hardcover Nonfiction. The authors espouse a plant-based diet high in complex carbs, as they did in 2012’s The Starch Solution, which has sold 54K copies in hardcover and trade paper.

New & Notable

The Fever Code
James Dashner
#2 Children’s Frontlist Fiction, #7 overall
The fifth book—and second prequel—in Dashner’s Maze Runner series joins a quartet of titles that together have sold more than five million print copies.

EveryDay Cook
Alton Brown
#3 Hardcover Nonfiction
The Food Network personality’s follow up to 2011’s Good Eats 3 collects 101 of his favorite recipes.

Woman of God
James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
#1 Hardcover Fiction
A doctor turned priest is discussed as a plausible contender for pope—and she’s a woman.

Jesus Always
Sarah Young
#12 Hardcover Nonfiction
Young, author of the megaselling Jesus Calling and related books, returns with a new devotional.

Crooked Kingdom
Leigh Bardugo
#3 Children’s Frontlist Fiction
Bardugo’s YA fantasy completes the duology she began with 2015’s Six of Crows, which has sold 92K copies in hardcover.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 Born to Run Bruce Springsteen Simon & Schuster 117,503
2 Killing the Rising Sun O’Reilly/Dugard Holt 70,447
3 The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins Riverhead 56,658
4 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child J.K. Rowling et al. Scholastic/Levine 42,382
5 The Girl on the Train (mass market movie tie-in) Paula Hawkins Riverhead 34,047
6 The Girl on the Train (trade paper movie tie-in) Paula Hawkins Riverhead 33,170
7 The Fever Code (Maze Runner #5) James Dashner Delacorte 25,409
8 Little Blue Truck’s Halloween Schertle/McElmurry HMH 24,994
9 Blue Danielle Steel Dell 22,034
10 Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Ransom Riggs Quirk 21,135

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.