Bestselling books the week of 4/24/14, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best in independent bookstores across America.

1. HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, Little Brown
2. The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd, Viking
3. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin, Algonquin
4. One More Thing, by B.J. Novak, Knopf
5. In Paradise, by Peter Matthiessen, Riverhead
6. Frog Music, by Emma Donoghue, Little Brown
7. The Husband's Secret, by Liane Moriarty, Amy Einhorn Books
8. By Its Cover, by Donna Leon, Atlantic Monthly Press
9. Can't and Won't, by Lydia Davis, FSG
10. Missing You, by Harlan Coben, Dutton
11. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, Crown
12. The Collector, by Nora Roberts, Putnam Adult
13. The Martian, by Andy Weir, Crown
14. William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back, by Ian Doescher, Quirk
15. Still Life With Bread Crumbs, by Anna Quindlen, Random House

On the Rise:
17. Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West, by Seth MacFarlane, Ballantine1
"Family Guy" creator MacFarlane's debut is a novel that reinvents the Western.

*Published Thursday, April 24, 2014 (for the sales week ended Sunday, April 20, 2014). 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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