TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of February 13, 1949

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
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4
1
THE YOUNG LIONS
Irwin Shaw
Cover of THE YOUNG LIONS

THE YOUNG LIONS

by Irwin Shaw · Random House

17 wks on list

Traces three young men, two Americans and one German, from 1938 to 1945 after they meet as soldiers in a Bavarian forest in World War II.

9
1
THE GRAND DESIGN
John Dos Passos
Cover of THE GRAND DESIGN

THE GRAND DESIGN

by John Dos Passos · Houghton Mifflin

3 wks on list

Portrait of the period when the New Deal was at the cocktail party stage in Washington. The novel critiques the gargantuan growth of bureaucracy in Washington during the Great Depression and World War II. The satiric novel conveys the author’s frustration with federal overreach and the hollow rhetoric that sells it to the people.

11
4
I CAPTURE THE CASTLE
Dodie Smith
Cover of I CAPTURE THE CASTLE

I CAPTURE THE CASTLE

by Dodie Smith · Little, Brown

14 wks on list

Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fading glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas, and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time. 'I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers' Joanna Trollope **One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

12
NEW
HOUND-DOG MAN
Fred Gipson
Cover of HOUND-DOG MAN

HOUND-DOG MAN

by Fred Gipson · Harper

2 wks on list
13
NEW
DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Thomas Mann
Cover of DOCTOR FAUSTUS

DOCTOR FAUSTUS

by Thomas Mann · Knopf

12 wks on list

In a story that symbolizes Germany's fall into Nazism, a talented German musician, Adrian, sells his soul to the devil in exchange for recognition as the greatest living composer.

14
5
CATALINA
W. Somerset Maugham
Cover of CATALINA

CATALINA

by W. Somerset Maugham · Doubleday

13 wks on list

Crippled sixteen-year-old Catalina is the one person unable to join in the festivities of the Feast of the Assumption. But then she has a vision of the Virgin, and is miraculously cured. In the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition, such a claim to blessedness has serious consequences, especially when Catalina seems more inclined to obey her heart than the demands of the Church. The last of Maugham's novels, Catalina is a romantic celebration of Spain and a delightfully mischievous satire on absolutism.

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.