The week’s bestselling books, Nov. 3

By The California Independent Booksellers Alliance

Oct. 30, 2024 6 AM PT

Hardcover fiction

1. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $29) Two grieving brothers come to terms with their history and the people they love.

2. The Waiting by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown & Co.: $30) LAPD Det. Renée Ballard tracks a serial rapist whose trail has gone cold.

3. James by Percival Everett (Doubleday: $28) An action-packed reimagining of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

4. Playground by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton & Co.: $30) The Pacific Ocean-set novel explores one of the last wild places we have yet to colonize.

5. Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Random House: $30) A return to the town of Crosby, Maine, and its colorful cast of characters.

6. Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (Scribner: $30) A seductive and cunning American woman infiltrates an anarchist collective in France.

7. Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer (MCD: $30) The fourth volume and the final word on the provocative speculative fiction series Southern Reach.

8. All Fours by Miranda July (Riverhead Books: $29) A woman upends her domestic life in this irreverent and tender novel.

9. Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway (Viking: $30) A new novel set in the world of John le Carré’s most iconic spy, George Smiley.

10. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Riverhead Books: $30) Two worlds collide when a teenager vanishes from her Adirondacks summer camp.

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Hardcover nonfiction

1. War by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster: $32) The Pulitzer winner’s account of one of the most tumultuous periods in presidential politics and American history.

2. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World: $30) The National Book Award winner travels to three sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell, and the ones we don’t, shape our realities.

3. Patriot by Alexei Navalny (Knopf $35) The memoir of a political opposition leader who paid the ultimate price for his beliefs.

4. Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten (Crown: $34) The Barefoot Contessa shares the story of her rise in the food world.

5. Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown & Co.: $32) The bestselling author reframes the lessons of his first book 25 years later.

6. What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci (Gallery Books $35) A memoir chronicling a year’s worth of meals from the award-winning actor.

7. Sonny Boy by Al Pacino (Penguin Press: $35) The legendary actor opens up about his life and creative journey.

8. Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari (Random House: $35) How the flow of information has shaped us and our world across the centuries.

9. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (Penguin Press: $32) The music producer’s guidance on how to be a creative person.

10. They Went Another Way by Bruce Eric Kaplan (Henry Holt: $29) A darkly comic memoir about being a working creative person in a world that is growing ever more dysfunctional, by the cartoonist and television writer.

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