May 25, 2014
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Charlaine Harris, whose “Midnight Crossroad” is No. 12 on the hardcover fiction list, says her character Sookie Stackhouse is not coming back despite protests from fans: “I had death threats, and people putting curses on me. All the usual stuff.”
Recently reviewed books of particular interest.
| This Week | Paperback Trade Fiction | Weeks on List |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GONE GIRL, by Gillian Flynn. (Broadway.) A woman disappears from her Missouri home on her fifth anniversary; is her bitter, oddly evasive husband a killer? | 3 | |
| 2 | THE LONGEST RIDE, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central.) The lives of two couples converge unexpectedly. While 91-year-old Ira is visited by his beloved wife (who passed away years earlier), Sophia, a college student, is enthralled by a young cowboy. | 1 | |
| 3 | ORPHAN TRAIN, by Christina Baker Kline. (Morrow/HarperCollins.) A historical novel about orphans swept off the streets of New York and sent to the Midwest in the 1920s. | 38 | |
| 4 | THE ALCHEMIST, by Paulo Coelho. (HarperOne/HarperCollins.) In this fable, a Spanish shepherd boy ventures to Egypt in search of treasure and his destiny. | 303 | |
| 5 | INFERNO, by Dan Brown. (Anchor.) The symbologist Robert Langdon, on the run in Florence, must decipher a series of codes created by a Dante-loving scientist. | 1 | |
| 6 | * | SHADOW SPELL, by Nora Roberts. (Berkley.) In County Mayo, Ireland, a falconer with an unresolved past falls for his sister's beguiling best friend; Book 2 of the Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy. | 7 |
| 7 | THE GODS OF GUILT, by Michael Connelly. (Grand Central.) Mickey Haller, a.k.a. the Lincoln lawyer, is drawn to a murder case in which the victim was his former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path. | 1 | |
| 8 | THE CUCKOO'S CALLING, by Robert Galbraith. (Mulholland/Little, Brown.) The struggling detective and former military man Cormoran Strike investigates a London supermodel’s suicide; by J.K. Rowling, writing pseudonymously. | 2 | |
| 9 | GIVING IN, by Maya Banks. (Berkley.) Kylie and her brother barely survived a childhood steeped in violence and abuse. Can she now give up total control and submit to a man? Book 2 of the Surrender trilogy. | 1 | |
| 10 | AMERICANAH, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (Anchor.) Young and in love, Ifemelu and Obinze leave military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Ifemelu finds academic success in America, while Obinze plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. | 10 | |
| 11 | FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, by E. L. James. (Vintage.) An inexperienced college student falls in love with a tortured man who has particular sexual tastes; the first book in a trilogy. | 113 | |
| 12 | DARK PLACES, by Gillian Flynn. (Broadway.) A woman who, as a child, was spared when her mother and sisters were murdered begins to reinvestigate the case against her imprisoned brother. | 41 | |
| 13 | * | A GAME OF THRONES, by George R. R. Martin. (Bantam.) In the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are mustering; Book 1 of "A Song of Ice and Fire." | 60 |
| 14 | ME BEFORE YOU, by Jojo Moyes. (Penguin.) A young woman who has barely been farther afield than her English village finds herself while caring for a wealthy, embittered quadriplegic. | 41 | |
| 15 | * | KING AND MAXWELL, by David Baldacci. (Grand Central.) Sean King and Michelle Maxwell, former Secret Service agents turned private investigators, scrutinize the report of a soldier’s mysterious death in Afghanistan. | 7 |
| 16 | THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS, by M. L. Stedman. (Scribner.) An Australian lighthouse keeper and his wife decide to keep a baby who has washed ashore. | 58 | |
| 17 | BEAUTIFUL RUINS, by Jess Walter. (Harper Perennial.) Ruins both emotional and architectural, in Italy, Hollywood and elsewhere, figure in this sweeping novel. | 58 | |
| 18 | THE CIRCLE, by Dave Eggers. (Vintage.) A dystopian novel about life on the campus of a powerful Internet company, whose credo is “All that happens must be known.” | 3 | |
| 19 | THE BURGESS BOYS, by Elizabeth Strout. (Random House.) Two brothers, both lawyers, return to their Maine hometown to defend their troubled teenage nephew. | 5 | |
| 20 | AUTHORITY, by Jeff VanderMeer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux.) After its tumultuous 12th expedition into the seemingly malevolent landscape known as Area X, a secret government agency is in disarray; Book 2 of the Southern Reach trilogy. | 1 | |
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