NEW ON THE LIST AND IN PUBLISHING
‘Houses’ rules:
Thirteen is a lucky number for author Louise Penny. Glass Houses, the 13th title in her Chief Inspector Gamache mystery series, lands at No. 1 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list this week. It’s the first Gamache book to make its debut in the top spot on USA TODAY’s list. Penny’s series, set in the Canadian village of Three Pines, has been steadily building an audience. Last year’s A Great Reckoning landed at No. 3, while The Nature of the Beast (2015) and The Long Way Home (2014) both made their debuts at No. 5. Her first book to hit the list — The Brutal Telling — peaked at No. 146 in 2009.
Oh my ‘Darling ’:
Backing from booksellers, critics and even Stephen King (not to mention media attention) is all adding up to a strong showing by debut novelist Gabriel Tallent. His novel My Absolute Darling, about a hardscrabble 14-year-old California girl named Turtle who must deal with her abusive father, makes its debut at No. 14. In a eeeg (out of four) review, USA TODAY’s Brian Truitt called it a “powerful debut.” The novel also sports a paragraph-long jacket blurb from King, who compares it to To Kill a Mockingbird and raves: “The word ‘masterpiece’ has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one.” According to a profile in The New York Times, Tallent, “a 30-yearold rock climber who lives in Salt Lake City … was waiting tables when he sold the novel to Riverhead in 2015.”