Here is a list of the most popular books sold last month at Books Inc. in the Marina:
HARDCOVER FICTION
1. Onyx Storm, by Rebecca Yarros
2. The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore
3. The Wedding People, by Alison Espach
HARDCOVER NON-FICTION
1. The Let Them Theory, by Mel Robbins
2. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin
3. The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life, by Sahil Bloom
PAPERBACK FICTION
1. The Secret War of Julia Child, by Diana R. Chambers
2. Orbital, by Samantha Harvey
3. Martyr, by Kaveh Akbar
PAPERBACK NON-FICTION
1. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, by Michael Finkel
2. Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D’, by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina
3. The Courage to Be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
YOUNG READERS
Young Adult: Oathbound, by Tracy Deonn
Middle Readers: London Calling: City Spies, Vol. 6, by James Ponti
Picture Book: San Francisco: A Book of Numbers, by Ashley Evanson
Kid Graphic Novel: The Great Space Iguana — Hilo, Vol. 13, by Judd Winick
NEW AND NOTABLE RELEASES
Audition, by Katie Kitamura
One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love. Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young — young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day — partner, parent, creator, muse — and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately. Taut and hypnotic, “Audition” is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.
Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry
Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry. Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years — or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century. When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game. One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice — and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over. Two: she’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication. Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition. But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room. And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story — just like the tale Margaret’s spinning — could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad … depending on who’s telling it.
I Am a Part of Infinity: The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein, by Kieran Fox
By digging deep into archival, epistolary, and biographical material, including Einstein’s large personal library, Kieran Fox reveals the paradigmatic scientific genius to be a seeker whose lifelong appreciation of the beauty and mysteriousness of the cosmos made him an ardent believer in a rational universe comprehensible by mathematics. Einstein’s unusual spiritual path ultimately led him to become a practitioner of pacifism and vegetarianism and to identify nature with a cosmic consciousness. Fox traces this triptych back to Einstein’s extensive readings of the idealist Arthur Schopenhauer, the panpsychist Baruch Spinoza, and the Hindu Upanishads. “I Am a Part of Infinity” is a delight to read at a point in time when the limits of materialism are coming into clear and public view.
Chris Hsiang can help you find your next book at Books Inc., 2251 Chestnut St., 415-931-3633, booksinc.net
