PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLERS
Publishers Weekly bestsellers for week ending Jan. 2.
HARDCOVER FICTION
1. “The Judge’s List” by John Grisham (Doubleday)
2. “The Stranger in the Lifeboat” by Mitch Albom (Harper)
3. “Wish You Were Here” by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine)
4. “The Wish” by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing)
5. “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles (Viking)
6. “Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone” by Diana Gabaldon (Delacorte)
7. “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
8. “Under the Whispering Door” by T.J. Klune (Tor)
9. “Fear No Evil” by James Patterson (Little, Brown)
10. “The Last Thing He Told Me” by
Laura Dave (Simon & Schuster)
11. “A Slow Fire Burning” by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead)
12. “Beautiful World, Where Are You?” by Sally Rooney (FSG)
13. “The Dark Hours” by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
14. “Mercy” by David Baldacci (Grand Central Publishing)
15. “Criminal Mischief” by Stuart Woods (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
HARDCOVER NONFICTION
1. “The Comfortable Kitchen” by Alex Snodgrass (William Morrow)
2. “Atlas of the Heart” by Brene Brown (Random House)
3. “The Real Anthony Fauci” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Skyhorse)
4. “The 1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones (One World)
5. “Call Us What We Carry” by Amanda Gorman (Viking)
6. “Will” by Will Smith (Penguin Press)
7. “The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Super Easy!” by Ree Drummond (William Morrow)
8. “Jesus Listens” by Sarah Young (Thomas Nelson)
9. “Laptop from Hell” by Miranda Devine (Post Hill)
10. “The Storyteller” by Dave Grohl (Dey Street)
11. “The Defense Lawyer” by Patterson/Wallace (Little, Brown)
12. “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order” by Ray Dalio (Avid Reader)
13. “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner (Knopf)
14. “Get Untamed” by Glennon Doyle (Clarkson Potter)
15. “The President and the Freedom Fighter” by Brian Kilmeade (Sentinel)
MASS MARKET PAPERBACKS
1. “Annihilation Road” by Christine Feehan (Berkley)
2. “Forgotten in Death” by J.D. Robb (St. Martin’s Press)
3. “19 Yellow Moon Road” by Fern Michaels (Zebra)
4. “Neighbors” by Danielle Steel (Dell)
5. “Thick as Thieves” by Sandra sleeps with his socks on makes her “feel a glimmer of possibility that this time she might be understood.”
Meanwhile, Gonzalez develops a rich parallel story about Olga’s brother, Prieto. He’s a popular U.S. congressman who represents Brooklyn and takes a special interest in Puerto Rico. A code-switching political Jedi, Prieto jokes with guys on the street corner just as naturally as he flatters rich donors who call him the Latino Obama. But as a closeted gay man being blackmailed by shady real estate developers, Prieto is risking his reputation, his career and even his freedom. He’s working to preserve the
Brown (Grand Central Publishing)
6. “Lost” by Patterson/Born (Grand Central Publishing)
7. “The Affair” by Danielle Steel (Dell) 8. “A Down Home Christmas” by Liz Talley (Hallmark)
9. “Preacher’s Inferno” by Johnstone/ Johnstone (Pinnacle)
10. Biscuits and Gravy“by Johnstone/ Johnstone (Pinnacle)
11. “Winter Weddings” by Debbie Macomber (Mira)
12. “Watching Over You” by Lori Foster (HQN)
13. “The Rescue” by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing)
14. “Last Stage to El Paso” by Johnstone/Johnstone (Pinnacle)
15. “Snowfall in Cold Creek” by RaeAnne Thayne (Harlequin)
TRADE PAPERBACKS
1. “Verity” by Colleen Hoover (Grand Central Publishing)
2. “The Love Hypothesis” by Ali Hazelwood (Berkley)
3. “People We Meet on Vacation” by
Latino culture of rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods even while he secretly greases the wheels for outside developers.
As these two siblings charge ahead with their successful but precarious lives, Gonzalez periodically interrupts the novel with old letters from their errant mother, who ran off to join the Young Lords and fight for Puerto Rico’s independence. Olga never saw Mami again, but every few years, one of her notes mysteriously arrives to castigate Olga for catering to capitalist pigs.
Even when Olga got accepted to an Ivy League college, Mami offered nothing but scorn. “Do not
Emily Henry (Berkley)
4. “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
5. “The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides (Celadon)
6. “Jujutsu Kaisen O” by Gege Akutami (Viz)
7. “Heaven Official’s Blessing” by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (Seven Seas)
8. “The Paris Detective” by Patterson/DiLallo (Grand Central Publishing)
9. “Chainsaw Man, Vol. 8” by Tatsuki Fujimoto (Viz)
10. “King of Battle and Blood” by Scarlett St. Clair (Bloom)
11. “Jujutsu Kaisen, Vol 13” by Gege Akutami (Viz)
12. “Clarity & Connection” by Yung Pueblo (Andrews McMeel)
13. “Neon Gods” by Katee Robert (Sourcebooks)
14. “The House in the Cerulean Sea” by T.J. Klune (Tor)
15. “Chainsaw Man, Vol. 3” by Tatsuki Fujimoto (Viz) confuse admission for a chance at power,” she wrote. “This kind of college has no place for you, even if they offered you one of their precious ‘affirmative action’ spots. They do not want to teach your people’s history; they don’t want to read your people’s books. They see no value in our culture.”
As a parenting approach, that’s pretty dreadful; as a recruiting technique, it’s worse. This is a woman who doesn’t “know the difference between missives and mothering” – between her abstract responsibilities to the cause and her maternal responsibilities to her children. Under the lash of Mami’s
— ASSOCIATED PRESS disdain, Olga feels even more determined to chase the American Dream while trying to maintain a sense of her Puerto Rican heritage that isn’t soiled by her mother’s egotism. She ends up building a business dependent on the same kind of elites that the Young Lords hoped to topple in Puerto Rico.
If this is a novel about toxic family secrets, it’s also a novel about clandestine national schemes. Aside from a collection of winning characters and an ingenious plot, what’s most impressive about “Olga Dies Dreaming” is the way Gonzalez stretches the seams of the romcom genre to accommodate her complex analysis of racial politics. She’s particularly wise about the way successful people of color must wend their way through American culture, negotiating with neighborhood suspicion on one side and White condescension on the other.
By the time Hurricane Maria demolishes Puerto Rico, Gonzalez has spun all the various personal and political crises of this story into a perfect storm. And with remarkable dexterity, “Olga Dies Dreaming” transitions temporarily into a political thriller about the way Washington and powerful business interests conspire to profit from the island’s suffering. (The Very Stable Genius who threw paper towels at desperate Puerto Ricans gets a special call-out, too.)
But Gonzalez never loses sight of Olga and her quest to find love without selling her soul – or a thousand overpriced napkins. Rarely does a novel, particularly a debut novel, contend so powerfully and so delightfully with such a vast web of personal, cultural, political and even international imperatives. For fiction lovers, what an auspicious start to 2022. ¡Feliz año nuevo, indeed!