Skip to footer

Bestselling books the week of 12/8/16, according to IndieBound

What's selling best at independent bookstores across America.

1. HARDCOVER FICTION

  • By IndieBound

1. The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, Doubleday
2. Moonglow, by Michael Chabon, Harper
3. The Whistler, by John Grisham, Doubleday
4. Swing Time, by Zadie Smith, Penguin Press
5. Night School, by Lee Child, Delacorte
6. Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett, Harper
7. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, Scribner
8. No Man's Land, by David Baldacci, Grand Central
9. A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, Viking
10. The Spy, by Paulo Coelho, Knopf
11. Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult, Ballantine
12. The Wrong Side of Goodbye, by Michael Connelly, Little Brown
13. Today Will Be Different, by Maria Semple, Little Brown
14. Cross the Line, by James Patterson, Little Brown – Debut
15. News of the World, by Paulette Jiles, Morrow
On the Rise:
20. The Whole Town's Talking, by Fannie Flagg, Random House
Flagg's fun-loving and moving new novel about what it means to be truly alive is a December 2016 Indie Next List Great Read.

Published Wednesday, December 7, 2016 (for the sales week ended Sunday, December 4, 2016). Based on reporting from many hundreds of independent bookstores across the United States. For information on more titles, please visit IndieBound.org
 

1 of 9
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.