Royal Treatment
Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness, about a young Vietnamese man contemplating suicide and a Lithuanian widow with dementia, debuts at #2 on our hardcover fiction list. “This novel is ultimately about how we sustain each other through service and unexpected bonds,” Vuong told PW, “and about how a life gains meaning through the people who remember it, even when memory itself begins to fade.” The book received a starred PW review and is the newest Oprah’s Book Club selection.
Look Skyward
Kennedy Ryan’s third Skyland romance, Can’t Get Enough, lands at #2 on our trade paperback list. The PW-starred novel’s first-week print unit sales are the strongest for the series to date.
On a Mission
Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils claims the #4 spot on our hardcover fiction list. The author “mixes a large helping of humor into his typical grimdark fare in this screwball epic set in a medieval-esque world where elves occupy the Holy Land and the female pope in Rome looks to settle a schism with her eastern counterpart, the patriarch of Troy,” according to our review. “Abercrombie leavens the violence with light banter and touches of sweet sapphic romance. Fans will come for the wicked swordplay and stay for the growing bonds between the eclectic cast.” It’s the author’s first novel since 2021’s The Wisdom of Crowds, which concluded his Age of Madness trilogy.
Law and Disorder
A pair of new books, one fiction and one nonfiction, offer commentary on our current state of affairs. With Fever Beach, #7 on our hardcover fiction list, Carl Hiaasen “continues to romp through Florida’s looniest corners in this hilarious send-up of white supremacists, crooked politicians, and the quirky citizens who oppose them,” per our starred review. “This funhouse-mirror satire offers welcome opportunities to laugh at the absurdities of 21st-century politics.” Leah Litman’s Lawless, #11 on our hardcover nonfiction list, is “a scathing takedown” of the Chief Justice John Roberts–led Supreme Court, according to our review. Litman, a lawyer and cohost of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, “ingeniously mines the past half century of conservative politics for comedy gold as she builds her case that the movement’s bugbears are now driving the court,” making for “a clear-eyed and alarming view of a court captured by far-right conspiracy theories.”
