The USA Today bestseller list is back.
The newspaper announced that its “Best-selling Booklist” has returned after going on hiatus in December. The Associated Press reports that the list was suspended after Mary Cadden, the Gannett employee who compiled it for more than 10 years, was laid off by the company.
The list, which debuted in 1993, is now automated and will be managed by USA Today books editor Barbara VanDenburgh.
“Our goal remains the same: Provide book lovers with the best, most accurate snapshot of what people are reading by showing which titles are selling,” VanDenburgh wrote. “It is a master list, unbound by genre and format, of what’s selling broadly across the U.S.”
The latest edition of the list has Elin Hildebrand’s The Five-Star Weekend in the No. 1 spot, followed by Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry. Rounding out the top five are Ali Hazelwood’s Love, Theoretically; Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, and Emily Henry’s Happy Place. James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones is the highest-ranking nonfiction book at No. 9.
Colleen Hoover, whose novel It Ends With Us is No. 7 on the list, told the newspaper, “I am so thrilled that the USA Today Best-selling Booklist is coming back! It gives so many authors the wonderful opportunity to be recognized as bestsellers and for readers to discover their next favorite book.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
