Locus Bestsellers, May 2019
The Locus Bestsellers for May include top titles Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James, Burn Bright by Patricia Briggs, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, and Star Wars: Last Shot by Daniel José Older.
| HARDCOVERS | Months on list |
Last month |
|
| 1) | Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James (Riverhead) | 1 | – |
| 2) | Binti: The Complete Trilogy, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW) | 1 | – |
| 3) | How Long ’til Black Future Month?, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) | 3 | 7 |
| 4) | The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor) | 1 | – |
| 5) | Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin (Bantam) | 4 | 1 |
| 6) | The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury USA) | 1 | – |
| 7) | The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie (Orbit US) | 1 | – |
| 8) | Red Moon, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US) | 4 | – |
| 9) | The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft (Chartwell) | 4 | – |
| 10) | In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing) | 2 | 6 |
| PAPERBACKS | |||
| 1) | Burn Bright, Patricia Briggs (Ace) | 1 | – |
| 2) | Dune, Frank Herbert (Ace) | 25 | 7 |
| 3) | Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (Morrow) | 18 | 6 |
| 4) | Embers of War, Gareth L. Powell (Titan) | 1 | – |
| 5) | King of Ashes, Raymond E. Feist (Harper Voyager US) | 1 | – |
| 6) | The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss (DAW) | 65 | 2 |
| 7) | Lake Silence, Anne Bishop (Ace) | 1 | – |
| *) | The Long Sunset, Jack McDevitt (Pocket) | 1 | – |
| 9) | The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) | 11 | 4 |
| 10) | The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien (Ballantine) | 45 | 10 |
| TRADE PAPERBACKS | |||
| 1) | The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) | 26 | 1 |
| 2) | The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu (Tor) | 29 | – |
| 3) | Shadow Captain, Alastair Reynolds (Orbit US) | 1 | – |
| 4) | Cast in Oblivion, Michelle Sagara (Mira) | 1 | – |
| 5) | All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor) | 7 | – |
| 6) | A People’s Future of the United States, Victor LaValle & John Joseph Adams, eds. (One World) | 1 | – |
| *) | The Power, Naomi Alderman (Back Bay) | 1 | – |
| 8) | The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) | 8 | – |
| 9) | Jade City, Fonda Lee (Orbit US) | 2 | 2 |
| *) | Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US) | 19 | – |
| *) | The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) | 11 | – |
| MEDIA & GAMING RELATED | |||
| 1) | Star Wars: Last Shot, Daniel José Older (Del Rey) | 3 | – |
| 2) | Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds, Gwenda Bond (Del Rey) | 1 | – |
| 3) | Warhammer 40,000: The Horus Heresy: Slaves to Darkness, John French (Black Library) | 1 | – |
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James dominated the hardcover list with almost twice as many votes as our second place finisher, Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti: The Complete Trilogy. The new runner-up was YA debut novel Dark of the West by Joanna Hathaway (Tor Teen), the first book in her Glass Alliance series. We had 58 nominated titles, up from 47 last month.
On the paperback list, Burn Bright by Patricia Briggs (book five in the Alpha and Omega series), took first place with a substantial lead over perennial SF favorite, Frank Herbert’s Dune. There were no new runners-up. There were 59 titles nominated, up from last month’s 47.
On the trade paperback list, it’s déjà vu all over again with N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season holding the top position, followed by The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu in second. There were no new runners-up. We had 64 titles nominated, up from 63 last month.
In media- and gaming-related books, Daniel José Older’s Star Wars: Last Shot returned to the media & gaming related books list in first place, followed in second by Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds by Gwenda Bond. There were no new runners-up. We had 26 nominated tiles, up from last month’s 20.
Compiled with data from Bakka-Phoenix Books (Canada), Barnes & Noble (USA), Borderlands (CA), McNally Robinson (2 in Canada), Mysterious Galaxy (CA), Toadstool (NH), Uncle Hugo’s (MN), White Dwarf (Canada).
Data period: February 2019
Note: book titles and covers on this page link to IndieBound, a network of independent booksellers, such as those that contribute to this list.
From the May 2019 issue of Locus.
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