eBranch Blog

January 31, 2005

New Bestsellers 1/31/05

The following books are appearing on the best seller lists for the first time this week. For a complete listing see our collection of Best Seller Lists.

NYT = New York Times
PW = Publisher's Weekly
USA = USA Today
WSJ = Wall Street Journal

Fiction

Ron McLarty. The Memory of Running
McLarty tells the story of Smithson Ide, a 43-year-old, 279-pound supervisor at a GI Joe factory who begins a cross-country journey on his old Raleigh bicycle to retrieve the body of his beautiful, mentally disturbed sister. (PW #14)

GILEAD , by Marilynne Robinson. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.) A story of fathers and sons that reaches back to the abolitionist movement and into the 1950's, narrated by a 76-year-old Iowa pastor who is dying. (NYT #13)

Zane. Afterburn
When Washington, D.C., chiropractor Yardley Brown goes to his local bank, it isn't only to make deposits into his account. He has long since accrued some interest in Rayne Waters, a bank employee who's too beautiful to be true -- and too beautiful to be single. At least that's what Yardley believes, which is why he has never approached her. Little does he know that Rayne is anything but taken. Not for want of trying, of course. But after barely surviving a dating disaster with her hairdresser's brother and then falling for a member of her church band who, it turns out, is celibate, she's on the verge of giving up. That is, until Yardley -- discouraged by his own slew of dead-end romances -- finally works up the courage to give her a try. (WSJ #14)

NYT Children's Chapter

Gennifer Choldenko. Al Capone Does My Shirts
A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards' families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister. (#10)

Cynthia Kadohata. Kira-Kira
Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill. (#2)

NYT Children's Picture

George O'Connor. Kapow
Truth, justice, and the American Eagleway! A young boy realizes what it really means to be a superhero. (#10)