TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of April 12, 2015

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
Jump to
1
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
Paula Hawkins
Cover of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

by Paula Hawkins · Riverhead

19 wks at #1 · 11 on list

THE RUNAWAY GLOBAL BESTSELLER 'Gripping, enthralling - a top-notch thriller and a compulsive read.' SJ Watson, bestselling author of BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She's even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. 'Jess and Jason', she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy. And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough. Now everything's changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she's only watched from afar. Now they'll see; she's much more than just the girl on the train... ***PAULA HAWKINS' NEW ADDICTIVE THRILLER, THE BLUE HOUR IS AVAILABLE NOW***

3
1
ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
Anthony Doerr
Cover of ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

by Anthony Doerr · Scribner

47 wks on list

An imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.

4
1
NYPD RED 3
James Patterson and Marshall Karp
Cover of NYPD RED 3

NYPD RED 3

by James Patterson and Marshall Karp · Little, Brown

2 wks on list

It's the start of Hollywood on Hudson, and New York City is swept up in the glamour. Every night, the red carpet rolls out for movie stars arriving at premieres in limos; the most exclusive restaurants close for private parties for wealthy producers and preeminent directors; and thousands of fans gather with the paparazzi, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most famous and beautiful faces in the world. With this many celebrities in town, special task force NYPD Red is on high alert-and they can't afford to make a single mistake. Then a world-renowned producer fatally collapses at his power breakfast, and top NYPD Red Detective Zach Jordan is the first one on the scene. Zach works with his beautiful new partner, Detective Kylie MacDonald-who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend-to discover who the murderer might be. But this is only the beginning: the most brutal, public, and horrifyingly spectacular crimes they've ever encountered are about to send all of New York into chaos, putting NYPD Red on the ropes. Zach and Kylie know there's no way of telling what a killer this deranged will do next. With the whole world watching, they have to find a way to stop a psychopath who has scripted his finale down to the last explosive detail. With larger-than-life action, relentless speed, and white-knuckle twists, NYPD Red is the next mega-blockbuster from "The Man Who Can't Miss." (TIME)

5
A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD
Anne Tyler
Cover of A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD

A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD

by Anne Tyler · Knopf

7 wks on list

The changing needs of aging parents impact a family gathering during which Abby Whitshank relates how her husband and she fell in love during the summer of 1959 and shared decades of marriage impacted by children and long-held secrets. Reading-group guide available. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Breathing Lessons. 125,000 first printing.

6
2
THE NIGHTINGALE
Kristin Hannah
Cover of THE NIGHTINGALE

THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah · St. Martin's

8 wks on list

The bestselling Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick 'One of the greatest storytellers of our time' – Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing Soon to be a major motion picture, The Nightingale is a multi-million copy bestseller across the world. It is a heart-breakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the endurance of women. 'I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known' This story is about what it was like to be a woman during World War II when women’s stories were all too often forgotten or overlooked . . . Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac are two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals and passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path towards survival, love and freedom in war-torn France. Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime. ‘A rich, compelling novel of love, sacrifice and survival’ - Kate Morton ‘Movingly written and plotted with the heartless skill of a Greek tragedy, you’ll keep turning the pages until the last racking sob’ - Daily Mail ‘I loved The Nightingale . . . great characters, great plots, great emotions, who could ask for more in a novel?’ - Isabel Allende, bestselling author of The House of the Spirits ‘A gripping tale of family, love, grief and forgiveness’ - Sunday Express The Nightingale has sold more than 4 million copies globally, TIME, February 2021

7
1
THE BURIED GIANT
Kazuo Ishiguro
Cover of THE BURIED GIANT

THE BURIED GIANT

by Kazuo Ishiguro · Knopf

4 wks on list

*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available * The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards - some strange and other-worldly - but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another. 'A beautiful fable with a hard message at its core . . . There won't, I suspect, be a more important work of fiction published this year.' The Times 'An exceptional novel . . . The Buried Giant does what important books do: it remains in the mind long after it has been read, refusing to leave.' New York Times Book Review 'A beautiful, heartbreaking book about the duty to remember and the urge to forget.' Observer

8
NEW
CUBA STRAITS
Randy Wayne White
Cover of CUBA STRAITS

CUBA STRAITS

by Randy Wayne White · Putnam

1 wks on list

The remarkable new novel in the Doc Ford series by New York Times–bestselling author Randy Wayne White. Doc Ford’s old friend, General Juan Garcia, has gone into the lucrative business of smuggling Cuban baseball players into the U.S. He is also feasting on profits made by buying historical treasures for pennies on the dollar. He prefers what dealers call HPC items—high-profile collectibles—but when he manages to obtain a collection of letters written by Fidel Castro between 1960–62 to a secret girlfriend, it’s not a matter of money anymore. Garcia has stumbled way out of his depth. First Garcia disappears, and then the man to whom he sold the letters. When Doc Ford begins to investigate, he soon becomes convinced that those letters contain a secret that someone, or some powerful agency, cannot allow to be made public. A lot happened between Cuba and the United States from 1960–62. Many men died. A few more will hardly be noticed.

9
2
ENDANGERED
C. J. Box
Cover of ENDANGERED

ENDANGERED

by C. J. Box · Putnam

3 wks on list

Don’t miss the JOE PICKETT series—now streaming on Paramount+ In this New York Times bestseller, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is determined to find out who put his daughter’s life in danger—even if it kills him. Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, and now he has even more—Joe’s eighteen-year-old daughter, April, has run off with him. And then comes even worse news: She has been found in a ditch along the highway—alive, but just barely, the victim of blunt force trauma. Cates denies having anything to do with it, but Joe knows in his gut who’s responsible. What he doesn’t know is the kind of danger he’s about to encounter. Cates is bad enough, but Cates’s family is like none Joe has ever met.

10
6
A DANGEROUS PLACE
Jacqueline Winspear
Cover of A DANGEROUS PLACE

A DANGEROUS PLACE

by Jacqueline Winspear · Harper

2 wks on list

Four years after she set sail from England, leaving everything she most loved behind, Maisie Dobbs at last returns, only to find herself in a dangerous place . . . In Jacqueline Winspear‘s powerful story of political intrigue and personal tragedy, a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gibraltar leads Maisie into a web of lies, deceit, and peril. Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability—and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father Frankie Dobbs is not getting any younger. But on a ship bound for England, Maisie realizes she isn’t ready to return. Against the wishes of the captain who warns her, “You will be alone in a most dangerous place,” she disembarks in Gibraltar. Though she is on her own, Maisie is far from alone: the British garrison town is teeming with refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Spain. Yet the danger is very real. Days after Maisie’s arrival, a photographer and member of Gibraltar’s Sephardic Jewish community, Sebastian Babayoff, is murdered, and Maisie becomes entangled in the case, drawing the attention of the British Secret Service. Under the suspicious eye of a British agent, Maisie is pulled deeper into political intrigue on “the Rock”—arguably Britain’s most important strategic territory—and renews an uneasy acquaintance in the process. At a crossroads between her past and her future, Maisie must choose a direction, knowing that England is, for her, an equally dangerous place, but in quite a different way.

11
THE FIFTH GOSPEL
Ian Caldwell
Cover of THE FIFTH GOSPEL

THE FIFTH GOSPEL

by Ian Caldwell · Simon & Schuster

4 wks on list

Ian Caldwell returns with a new intellectual thriller that confirms his place among the most ambitious popular storytellers working today, as a lost gospel, a relic, and a dying pope's final wish send two brothers - both Vatican priests - on a quest to untangle Christianity's biggest mystery. 2004. As Pope John Paul II's reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered. The same night, a violent break-in rocks the home of the curator's research partner, Father Alex Andreou, a Greek Catholic priest who lives inside the Vatican with his five-year-old son. When the papal police fail to identify a suspect in either crime, Father Alex, desperate to keep his family safe, undertakes his own investigation. To find the killer he must reconstruct the dead curator's secret. But just as he begins to understand the truth about his friend's death, and its consequences for the future of the world's two largest Christian Churches, Father Alex finds himself hunted down ...

12
NEW
LEAVING BERLIN
Joseph Kanon
Cover of LEAVING BERLIN

LEAVING BERLIN

by Joseph Kanon · Atria

2 wks on list

Targeted by McCarthyism for his prewar politics, a young Jewish writer who fled the Nazis to America makes a desperate bargain with a fledgling CIA to work as a spy in a decimated Berlin.

13
1
WORLD GONE BY
Dennis Lehane
Cover of WORLD GONE BY

WORLD GONE BY

by Dennis Lehane · Morrow/HarperCollins

3 wks on list

A psychologically, morally complex novel of blood, crime, passion, and vengeance, set in Cuba and Ybor City, Florida, during World War II, in which Joe Coughlin must confront the cost of his criminal past and present. Ten years have passed since Joe Coughlin’s enemies killed his wife and destroyed his empire, and much has changed. Prohibition is dead, the world is at war again, and Joe’s son, Tomás, is growing up. Now, the former crime kingpin works as a consigliore to the Bartolo crime family, traveling between Tampa and Cuba, his wife’s homeland. A master who moves in and out of the black, white, and Cuban underworlds, Joe effortlessly mixes with Tampa’s social elite, U.S. Naval intelligence, the Lansky-Luciano mob, and the mob-financed government of Fulgencio Batista. He has everything—money, power, a beautiful mistress, and anonymity. But success cannot protect him from the dark truth of his past—and ultimately, the wages of a lifetime of sin will finally be paid in full. Dennis Lehane vividly recreates the rise of the mob during a world at war, from a masterfully choreographed Ash Wednesday gun battle in the streets of Ybor City to a chilling, heartbreaking climax in a Cuban sugar cane field. Told with verve and skill, World Gone By is a superb work of historical fiction from one of “the most interesting and accomplished American novelists” (Washington Post) writing today.

14
5
THE ASSASSIN
Clive Cussler and Justin Scott
Cover of THE ASSASSIN

THE ASSASSIN

by Clive Cussler and Justin Scott · Putnam

4 wks on list

Detective Isaac Bell tracks a killer across the nation’s oilfields in this adventure in the #1 New York Times–bestselling historical series. As Van Dorn private detective Isaac Bell strives to land a government contract to investigate John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, the case takes a deadly turn. A sniper begins murdering opponents of Standard Oil, and soon the assassin—shooting with extraordinary accuracy at seemingly impossible long range—kills Bell’s best witness. Then the shooter detonates a terrible explosion that sets the victim’s independent refinery ablaze. Bell summons his best detectives to hunt down the mysterious killer. But the murders—shootings, poisonings, staged accidents—have just begun as Bell tracks his phantom-like criminal adversary from the “oil fever” regions of Kansas and Texas to Washington, D.C., to the tycoons’ enclave of New York, to Russia’s war-torn Baku oil fields on the Caspian Sea, and back to America for a final, desperate confrontation. And this one will be the most explosive of all.

15
NEW
LAST ONE HOME
Debbie Macomber

LAST ONE HOME

by Debbie Macomber · Ballantine

"The Palmer sisters couldn't be more different. Karen, the eldest, is the responsible one, the one who got the grades, married the perfect guy, and has two wonderful, high-achieving children. Cassie is the rebellious one who got pregnant right after high school and married the wrong man, despite her family's misgivings. And Nicole is a free, creative spirit who's always been indulged and pampered as the baby of the family who could do no wrong. These differences were enough to drive the three sisters apart over the years, but their mother's unexpected death makes them realize that she would have wanted them to repair old wounds and let bygones be bygones. What they discover is that none of their lives are as perfect as they seem, and despite their differences, they're the only family each other can depend on. A heartwarming illustration of all the ups and downs of life, and the sometimes fraught, but always enduring, relationship between sisters.

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