Asked and Answered

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, which our starred review called “a clever and deeply thoughtful story involving a 1990s boarding school murder and its repercussions decades later,” debuts at #4 on our hardcover fiction list.

Makkai, who attended boarding school in the early 1990s, told PW in a prepub interview that “I was always going to end up writing a boarding school novel.... If I’m in a certain mood, I’m able to access this sense of deep past, to rethink who I was then and understand what was problematic about the culture of the ’90s.” The novel follows Makkai’s 2018 National Book Award and Pulitzer finalist, The Great Believers, which boosted her profile and sales trajectory.

Seeing Double

Freida McFadden’s domestic thriller The Housemaid’s Secret debuts at #6 on our trade paperback list. It’s the sequel to The Housemaid, which has sold 133K print copies since its August publication and claimed a consistent spot on our trade paper list; it’s up three spots this week to #9. A recent article in the Bookseller called the novel the all-time biggest earner for Bookouture, a decade-old digital startup that Hachette U.K. acquired in 2017. The imprint has partnered with Grand Central on many of its U.S. releases, including The Housemaid; The Housemaid’s Secret was released here as a Bookouture title.

New Outfit

Since John Patrick Green launched his InvestiGators middle grade series in 2020, the six pun-packed graphic novels have sold a combined 738K print copies. Now a spin-off series launches with InvestiGators: Agents of S.U.I.T., #3 on our children’s fiction list. Green began thinking about expanding the world of the InvestiGators as the original books picked up steam, he told PW in a prepub interview, and fielded anonymous submissions in order to find cowriter Christopher Hastings, a fellow SVA alum and the creator of the webcomic Adventures of Dr. McNinja, and illustrator Pat Lewis, whose past projects include work on other children’s books and in Highlights.

NEW & NOTABLE

THINGS WE HIDE FROM THE LIGHT
Lucy Score
#1 Trade Paperback, #1 overall
“Score pairs a sassy insurance investigator with the police chief of a sleepy Virginia town in her sprawling second Knockemout romance,” according to our review. She “keeps the pages turning with a twisty, danger-laced plot; feisty leads; and blazing passion.”

YOUNG FOREVER
Mark Hyman
#1 Hardcover Nonfiction,
#2 overall
“Outlining strategies to maintain good health into one’s later years, Hyman promotes common wisdom about refraining from smoking, getting ‘75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week,’ and maintaining a protein-rich diet,” per our review. “A few unrealistic remedies aside, this makes for a solid primer on keeping up one’s health in old age.”