King, Sandberg lead Boswell 2017 bestseller list
Books by Stephen King and Sheryl Sandberg topped the 2017 bestselllers list at Milwaukee’s Boswell Books, according to lists released by the bookstore.
“Sleeping Beauties,” a horror novel King co-wrote with his son, Owen King, led Boswell’s hardcover fiction list. Sandberg’s “Option B,” an inspirational book about grief and resilience co-written with Adam Grant, was Boswell’s bestselling hardcover nonfiction book.
Like many of Boswell’s top sellers, sales of both books benefited from related author visits here. Boswell’s bestselling novel without a local event was Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow,” followed by George Saunders’ “Lincoln in the Bardo.”
Boswell’s bestselling paperback nonfiction book was Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted,” based on Desmond’s study of the relationship between eviction and poverty in Milwaukee. The store’s bestselling paperback fiction was “Arrow the Dark Archer,” a graphic novel by actor John Barrowman and his sister Carole E. Barrowman, an Alverno College professor of English and a regular contributor to Journal Sentinel book coverage.
Boswell’s bestselling children’s books in 2017 were “The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors” by Drew Daywalt and Adam Rex in the picture book category, and “The Ship of the Dead: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard” by Rick Riordan in the 8 and older readers category.
The bookstore did not reveal actual number of books sold in its lists.
A few other notes:
❚ Min Jin Lee’s novel “Pachinko,” which Boswell enthusiastically recommended throughout the year, made both the hardcover (No. 10) and paperback (No. 9) lists. So did Paulette Jiles’ novel “News of the World” (No. 33 hardcover, No. 14 paperback).
❚ Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan’s “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” was No. 8 on the hardcover nonfiction list.
❚ “Brick Through the Window: An Oral History of Punk Rock, New Wave and Noise in Milwaukee, 1964-1984,” compiled by Steven Nodine, Eric Beaumont, Clancy Carroll and David Luhrssen, finished second to “Evicted” on the paperback nonfiction list.