Few things boast a sleeker summer look than a slim, 200-page novel.

And while not all of the offerings here are that brief, several are, and you have to imagine this trend might have to do with a desire to tell a compelling story with an economy of words. Or it might be because it’s a little easier to hold a short book aloft with one hand as ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, July 25, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2026 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2026, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "The Calamity ...Read more

Victoria Chang says her new collection began with the loss of a neighborhood tree, but eventually grew to encompass a variety of influences, poems and art.

Chang, the acclaimed author of books that include “OBIT,” “With My Back to the World” and “Dear Memory,” has just published this collection of poems, “Tree of Knowledge,” ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Classics scholar Emily Wilson was in Greece’s Costa Navarino last year when she heard the news that would change her life: Filmmaker Christopher Nolan was planning to release a star-studded adaptation of "The Odyssey," the epic poem that Wilson had spent years painstakingly translating from Homeric Greek into English.

Nolan’...Read more

For “Cool Machine,” the 1980s-set final novel in his Harlem crime trilogy, Colson Whitehead drew inspiration from another classic American story.

That’s right, “Die Hard.”

While there aren’t any obvious parallels between the movie and his novel’s three sections, Whitehead says the idea of the 1988 blockbuster action film, which ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, July 18, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2026 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2026, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "Ransom: A ...Read more

ANAHEIM, Calif. — The first challenge writer Craig Fehrman faced as he considered writing a book on the Lewis and Clark Expedition was whether there was enough fresh material to warrant the project.

After poring over the journals of Merriweather Lewis and William Clark, a million words in all, Fehrman decided there was.

“After I read the ...Read more

Krys Malcolm Belc wrote a new book so he could stop worrying about his last one.

The St. Paul, Minnesota, man’s new memoir, “What I Made for Dinner,” comes five years after his first, “The Natural Mother of the Child.”

“When my book came out, I asked some writers, ‘What is the best way to deal with the anxiety of having a book ...Read more

CHICAGO -- At the end of a particularly difficult shift in the University of Chicago Trauma Center, Dr. Selwyn Rogers Jr. came home, put some Miles Davis on and started to write.

During that shift in the summer of 2022, Rogers and the team of trauma surgeons he leads at UChicago Medicine had treated two teenage boys who were each shot multiple ...Read more

Look, it’s happened to all of us: Late one night, you’re on the couch, an overwhelming menu of Netflix shows radiates unwatched on the screen, and you snatch up a handheld repository of short, attention-grabbing items.

A poetry collection.

That could happen, right? Instead of pawing for your doomscrolling device, you could instead pick up ...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, July 11, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2026 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2026, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "Yesteryear: A...Read more

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, July 11, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2026 Circana.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2026, PWxyz LLC.)

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "Yesteryear: A...Read more

Daniel Mason fans know what to expect from his new novel: the unexpected.

Mason’s last book, “North Woods,” set on the same spot in Massachusetts over the course of about 400 years, was my favorite fiction of 2023. It’s absolutely nothing like Mason’s Pulitzer Prize finalist story collection, “A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth...Read more

ANAHEIM, Calif. — In James Ellroy‘s new “Red Sheet,” it’s October 1962 in Los Angeles, and in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the city is on edge with rumors of communist sleeper cells and hit squad conspiracies.

Detective Freddy Otash is back in the Los Angeles Police Department, given a badge to do the dirty work the ...Read more

Before “Remember the Main” arrived in bookstores, its subject, Bob Jansen, knew who should play him in a movie version: George Clooney.

“I do wish they’d make a movie,” said Meg Gorzycki, who wrote “Remember,” subtitled “The Gay Bar That Started a Movement in the Northland.” The wide-ranging book touches on many forms of ...Read more