The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Washington Post paperback bestsellers

September 23, 2020 at 10:37 a.m. EDT

Fiction

1 THE OVERSTORY (Norton, $18.95). By Richard Powers. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, several people find their lives intertwined with trees.
2 THE NICKEL BOYS (Anchor, $15.95). By Colson Whitehead. A Black teen is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory where students are physically and sexually abused.
3 CIRCE (Back Bay, $16.99). By Madeline Miller. This follow-up to “The Song of Achilles” is about the goddess who turns Odysseus and his men to swine.
4 NORMAL PEOPLE (Hogarth, $17). By Sally Rooney. A popular athlete and a bookish social pariah start a secret relationship while in high school, then float in and out of each other’s lives into adulthood.
5 HOMEGOING (Vintage, $16.95). By Yaa Gyasi. A Ghanaian family is torn apart by slavery, and the ramifications play out over generations.
6 THE TESTAMENTS (Anchor, $16.95). By Margaret Atwood. The Booker Prize winner revisits the totalitarian society introduced in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
7 DUNE (Ace, $18). By Frank Herbert. The classic science fiction novel in which a young boy survives a family betrayal on an inhospitable world.
8 THIS TENDER LAND (Atria, $17). By William Kent Krueger. Four orphans run away from their school in Minnesota and sail down the Mississippi River.
9 PARABLE OF THE SOWER (Grand Central, $16.99). By Octavia E. Butler. A young Black woman in early 2020s California must navigate a society decimated by climate change and greed.
10 LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE (Penguin, $17). By Celeste Ng. The idyllic facade of a peaceful suburb begins to crack when an enigmatic artist and her daughter move to town.

Nonfiction

1 WHITE FRAGILITY (Beacon Press, $16). By Robin DiAngelo. An academic explores the counterproductive ways White people respond to discussions about racism.
2 THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS (Vintage, $17.95). By Isabel Wilkerson. A comprehensive history of the Great Migration, from 1915 to 1970.
3 MY OWN WORDS (Simon and Schuster, $18). By Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflects on her life.
4 SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT RACE (Seal Press, $16.99). By Ijeoma Oluo. Guidance for having difficult conversations about race with people from all backgrounds.
5 THE COLOR OF LAW (Liveright, $17.95). By Richard Rothstein. An in-depth look at how the U.S. government imposed residential segregation.
6 INTIMATIONS (Penguin, $10.95). By Zadie Smith. Personal essays written during the initial months of lockdown explore our unprecedented reality.
7 THE FIRE NEXT TIME (Vintage, $13.95). By James Baldwin. Thoughts on racial injustice, written in the form of two letters.
8 THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS (New Press, $18.99). By Michelle Alexander. An analysis of the ways discrimination against African Americans still proliferates despite the dismantling of Jim Crow laws.
9 MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS (Central Recovery Press, $17.95). By Resmaa Menakem. A therapist explores racism’s traumatic effects on bodies.
10 BORN A CRIME (One World, $18). By Trevor Noah. The “Daily Show” host looks back at his upbringing in South Africa during apartheid.

Mass Market

1 DUNE (Ace, $10.99). By Frank Herbert. The classic science fiction novel in which a young boy survives a family betrayal on an inhospitable world.
2 1984 (Signet, $9.99). By George Orwell. The classic novel about the perils of a totalitarian police state.
3 DUNE MESSIAH (Ace, $9.99.) By Frank Herbert. The second book in the Dune Chronicles picks up the story of Paul Atreides 12 years after becoming Emperor of the known universe.
4 ANIMAL FARM (Signet, $9.99). By George Orwell. Animals stage a workers’ coup on a farm, then devolve into a totalitarian state, in this classic broadside against Stalinism
5 I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS (Ballantine, $7.99). By Maya Angelou. The poet, memoirist and political activist’s debut memoir.
6 LETHAL AGENT (Pocket, $9.99). By Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills. Amid a presidential election, Mitch Rapp and Irene Kennedy attempt to thwart a bioterrorism attack on the United States.
7 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X (Ballantine, $7.99). By Malcolm X. The life of an American Muslim minister who was a civil rights leader and an iconic supporter of black nationalism.
8 ONE GOOD DEED (Grand Central, $9.99). By David Baldacci. After his release from prison, a war veteran becomes a suspect in a murder he didn’t commit.
9 LORD OF THE FLIES (Perigee, $11). By William Golding. The classic, unsettling tale of English schoolboys stranded on a deserted isle.
10 THE GUARDIANS (Dell, $9.99). By John Grisham. A young Black man is suspected of killing his former lawyer.

Rankings reflect sales for the week ended Sept. 20. The charts may not be reproduced without permission from the American Booksellers Association, the trade association for independent bookstores in the United States, and indiebound.org. Copyright 2020 American Booksellers Association. (The bestseller lists alternate between hardcover and paperback each week.)

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