BOOK BUZZ

NEW ON THE LIST AND IN PUBLISHING

Top shot: It continues to be a pretty good year for James Patterson. The author’s latest Women’s Murder Club release with Maxine Paetro, The Medical Examiner, debuts at No. 1 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list this week.

It’s his fourth No. 1 book this year. It also happens to be the first title for his imprint, BookShots, to debut at the top spot. BookShots is billed as “All thriller. No filler. Under 150 pages. Under

$5” and the titles are proving popular, with more than

3 million BookShots titles in print since its launch last year.

In addition to The Medical Examiner, another BookShots release, Patterson’s The Dolls (with Kecia Bal), debuts at No. 42.

‘Fletcher’ flourishes:

Tom

Perrotta’s latest novel, Mrs. Fletcher, the story of a divorcee who becomes obsessed with X-rated websites, while her son gets into trouble at college, debuts at No. 34, the highest for the author. His previous best was The Leftovers, which debuted at No. 51 in 2011.

Perrotta shared with USA TODAY how he blends humor with more serious social issues: “I don’t think of humor as trivial or incompatible with serious thinking. The really important thing for me in blending humor and anything else in my books is that the humor comes from the character, that it isn’t inflicted on the character. I think if you sacrifice your character for a joke, the reader won’t take them seriously ever again.”

Like The Leftovers, which wrapped up this year, Perrotta is developing Mrs. Fletcher as a series for HBO.