Bestselling books the week of 3/15/12, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.

1. HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James, Knopf
 2. The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, Knopf
 3. Lone Wolf, by Jodi Picoult, Atria
 4. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, Little Brown
 5. The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain, Ballantine
 6. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander, Knopf
 7. State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett, Harper
 8. 11/22/63, by Stephen King, Scribner
 9. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, Doubleday
 10. The Expats, by Chris Pavone, Crown
 11. The Starboard Sea, by Amber Dermont, St. Martin's
 12. The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, FSG
 13. 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, Knopf
 14. Kill Shot, by Vince Flynn, Atria
 15. The Wolf Gift, by Anne Rice, Knopf

ON THE RISE:
 19. Carry the One, by Carol Anshaw, S&S
 Anshaw's novel about a tragic car accident and the lives of those involved is a March 2012 Indie Next List Great Read.

*Published Thursday, March 15, 2012 (for the sales week ended Sunday, March 11,  2012). 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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