HBG Big News This Week: September 2-6, 2019

Following is a recap of major news at Hachette Book Group for the week of September 2-6, 2019:

Bestseller news: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Back Bay/LB) tops the NYT Print Paperback Fiction bestseller list for a second consecutive week, and Jeanine Pirro’s Radicals, Resistance, and Revenge (Center Street) debuts this week at #3 on both the Print Hardcover Nonfiction and Combined Print & Ebook Nonfiction bestseller lists, and at #7 on the USA Today bestseller list. Hachette Audio has five titles on the NYT Audio Monthly bestseller (Fiction) list including three debuting this week – Outfox by Sandra Brown (GCP), The Inn by James Patterson & Candice Fox (LB) and Old Bones by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (GCP).

Major release: anticipation has been building for months for Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know (LB), which goes on sale next week.  The author will make appearances on major national tv programs including a one-hour primetime special with Anderson Cooper for CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, BBC World News America, PBS Newshour, CNN/PBS’s Amanpour, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, and on NPR’s Here & Now. A major New York Times feature ran on the cover of the Sunday Business section last weekend, the book is a People magazine Book of the Week, and is included in all of the best of the fall coverage, including  The Washington PostAARPTime , GoodReads, and Vox. The author did an Interview with Oprah Winfrey for the September issue of O Magazine, and an 8 page feature ran in WebMD’s September issue; interviews and reviews lie ahead in USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, NY Post, New Republic, and Christian Science Monitor. YouTube’s new Book Tube original series selected the book for its October book club pick, and Malcolm will be interviewed on many podcasts including Jordan Harbinger, Vox’s Ezra Klein, Ministry of Ideas, Business Insider’s This is Success, Big Think, The Economist Asks, and Salon Talks.

Booker Prize: Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities (LB) made the shortlist for the 2019 Booker Prize. The winner will be announced October 14 and will receive £50,000 (about $60,000).

Hilderbrand to TV: Fox has put in development The Perfect Couple, a one-hour mystery drama based on Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 bestselling novel from Little, Brown. The project is from Fox Entertainment’s SideCar Content Accelerator. Hilderbrand will executive produce with SideCar’s Gail Berman.

Hallmark movie: Jenny Hale’s USA Today bestseller Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses (Forever) will be a Hallmark Channel original movie this holiday season. The movie will air on October 26 as part of Hallmark’s annual Countdown to Christmas event. Click here to see a behind-the-scenes video featuring stars Jill Wagner (Teen Wolf) and Matthew Davis (The Vampire Diaries).

September picks: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook) was chosen by Amazon’s editors for their Top 10 Picks, and we have many books in many other categories in Amazon’s Best Books of the Month for September 2019. Barnes & Noble‘s top picks for the month include James Patterson and Howard Roughan’s Killer Instinct (LB).