Women rule Amazon’s list of the bestselling books of all time (where “all time” = since 1995), claiming nine of the top 10 spots and 27 of the top 50.

The #1 spot belongs to The Hunger Games, and indeed, Suzanne Collins’s dystopian YA series dominates the top 10.

E.L. James ties with Suzanne Collins, as all three Fifty Shades books appear in the top 10.

Harry Potter makes his first appearance at #2.

The only nonfiction book in the top 10 is Tom Rath’s StrengthsFinder 2.0, a perennial favorite of corporate coaches.

Dark and twisty women round out the top 10, with The Handmaid’s Tale at #8 and Gone Girl at #9.

Other notables:

✅ Check out the full list.

The book vibes are excellent this year—the best we’ve felt since 2021’s totally stacked fall season—and while titles from last year (Theo of Golden and The Correspondent) continue to reign atop bestseller lists, new books are gaining ground.

📊 Listen to the latest Hot List episode for information on more of the month’s trending titles.

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In this heartfelt and humorous fantasy from the Nebula-winning author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In, a dragon whose three heads bear rather…different…personalities finds family in the most unexpected of places.

This cozy fantasy intertwines epic battles with loving friendships, sharing an utterly unique perspective on what it means to be a “monster” while subverting popular dragon rider tropes.

Kody Keplinger is back with her first YA book in a number of years, Where Lost Girls Go. The story centers a cult, a theme that has long drawn in readers. But what makes the cult story so compelling? Why are we eager to read these stories, whether they’re fiction or factual?

Here’s what Keplinger says:

“When I sat down to write Where Lost Girls Go – a project my editor strongly encouraged me to pursue because she, too, is fascinated by cults – I had to start with this question. And while there are many answers to be found, I’ve developed a theory as to the primary reason we are drawn to these stories: because we want to know if it could happen to us.”

“There’s a reason so many pieces of media focus on the leaders of these cults more than the victims or survivors. We want to study these people and reassure ourselves that, whatever power they have, it would never work on us. So often I hear the refrain of, “How could anyone buy this?” or “I’d never fall for this.” But, I think, secretly, a lot of us carry at least a speck of doubt.”

“[W]hat I learned is that anyone – yes, anyone – no matter how smart, how strong, how successful, can be vulnerable to the lure of one of these groups. If the right person comes along at the wrong place and time, they can feel like a hero rather than a predator. It’s a scary thought, but it’s one that has given me so much empathy for the people who end up in cults.”

Among Keplinger’s favorite YA cult stories:

➡️ Dive into Keplinger’s thoughts on the appeal of cult stories in YA fiction and where and how those thoughts intersect with Where Lost Girls Go, available now.  – KJ

The Odyssey opens in theaters today, and the reviews of Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation are almost as rosy as the fingers of Homer’s beloved dawn. Here’s a look at the reviews:

A genuinely grand, gutsy vision, “The Odyssey” thrills generously for the bulk of its near three-hour running time: Every few minutes, it seems, it throws at its audience another mighty setpiece that, in almost any other summer studio spectacle, would be a climactic standout. — Guy Lodge, Variety

…The craziest thing about The Odyssey is that Nolan’s interpretation absolutely sticks the landing, adding an unexpected dimension to one of our culture’s most told and retold sagas. This is a film stuffed with bravura set pieces and awesome effects; it’s also mature and thoughtful, a character study disguised as a blockbuster. — Hillary Busis, Vanity Fair

Nolan employs beauty strategically, using it to seduce viewers into stories that can seem needlessly byzantine to some — especially by impoverished mainstream industry standards — more the provenance of the art house than the multiplex. Nolan asks us to dream bigger. His “Odyssey” is a classic in every sense, a transporting affirmation of the art and a work of pure cinema. — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Need a refresher on the book before you see the movie? We’ve got you covered.

You already instantly save up to 20% on more than 200,000 titles with ThriftBooks Deals, and now for a limited time you’ll also earn double points on every ThriftBooks Deals item, just for being a valued ReadingRewards® member!

You can enjoy 15 hours of audiobook listening every month with your Spotify Premium membership. Here are three young adult releases available now, all under 15 hours.

Maya C. Popa is the poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and the author of If You Love That Lady: Poems, a collection of poetry inspired by nineteenth-century courtship letters that is out this week from WW Norton. Below, she discusses why we can’t get enough epistolary courtship.

I fell in love with Sally McDowell and John Miller during the pandemic, when I discovered their collected correspondence. She, a Virginia divorcée. He, a Presbyterian minister.

Their courtship begins with a rejection, then unfolds across years of letters written on the brink of the Civil War. They often chastise each other for not writing quickly enough and make wry remarks on the nature of the new paper or ink.

The letters are funny, intimate, tender. They’re idiosyncratic—one learns all sorts of unlikely things about Virginia and New England in the 1850s. But most importantly, one hears that deep, satisfying well of human quiddity: two irreplicable, unreplaceable individuals who became more alive by writing to each other. 

Writers love to eavesdrop. There’s no richer act of eavesdropping than reading a collection of letters exchanged over years. In “On the Addressee,” Osip Mandelstam posits why letters are so ripe for literary imagination: a letter may never reach its intended recipient.

“A letter sealed in a bottle is thrown into the sea…I have found it. Therefore I am the secret addressee.”

That is also true of poems of apostrophe, addressed to someone absent, imagined, or otherwise unreachable. They are fueled by their sense of reaching, of never quite closing the gap between desire and desired. As readers, we turn to their elegant intimacies, becoming both the listener and witness to uncertainty. 

That was the energy I hoped to draw from for my third collection, If You Love That Lady (W.W. Norton, 2026). Not the letters themselves, but their enchanting, stirring mix of precision and vulnerability, measured craft and cosmic chance.

In lives accustomed, as they all mostly are, to immediate contact, letters remind us how generative a place silence and delay can be. And if love is a luminous act of the imagination, then letters are our best evidence of that sustained capacity over time.

Not all “book club” books are the same. Some people like more plot. Some more character. Some people like to visit different times and places. Some people like to read something that feels like it could be happening next door.  Here are three book club ideas for different kinds of book clubs and readers.

🕰️ For the historical fiction reader: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver 
A continent and decade-spanning novel of art, politics, and a character struggling to find their place in the world. Kingsolver’s character mastery and worldbuilding are on full display, as is her interest in notable events from history. 

☕️ For the reader who likes dish: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
If your friend died and left behind a literary masterpiece that no one knew about, what would you do? Kuang has reached the heights of the book world and knows its faults as well as anybody, and she shows them all here. 

❤️ For the “remember when” reader: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
A story of memory and artistic ambition, Tom Lake is told as one long remembrance of a golden moment where theatrical dreams were in bloom, as was a serious romance. But both of those things went a different direction, not for worse, really, but still a bittersweet account of a life that almost was.

Did you know? Tony Kushner is one of a handful of writers to have been nominated for a Grammy, a Tony, an Emmy, and an Oscar.

😎 Stay cool with 93 summer reading recs.

🌱 Swoon over the world’s first nature library.

📚 Read these mysteries and thrillers set in summer camps and amusement parks.

⛈️ Take cover with steamy weather-related romances.

🌈 Queer your TBR with the Our Queerest Shelves newsletter.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Kelly Jensen, Jeff O’Neal, Danika Ellis, and Vanessa Diaz. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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