Bestselling books the week of 12/31/15, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best in independent bookstores across America?

1. HARDCOVER FICTION

1. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, Scribner
2. The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins, Riverhead
3. Rogue Lawyer, by John Grisham, Doubleday
4. Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff, Riverhead
5. Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee, Harper
6. The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah, St. Martin's
7. Felicity, by Mary Oliver, Penguin Press
8. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, by Stephen King, Scribner,
9. Avenue of Mysteries, by John Irving, S&S
10. The Girl in the Spider's Web, by David Lagercrantz, Knopf
11. The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende, Atria
12. The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, by Mitch Albom, Harper
13. See Me, by Nicholas Sparks, Grand Central
14. Slade House, by David Mitchell, Random House
15. Purity, by Jonathan Franzen, FSG

*Published Wednesday, December 30, 2015 (for the sales week ended Sunday, December 27, 2015). Based on reporting from many hundreds of independent bookstores across the United States. For information on more titles, please visit IndieBound.org

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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