Locus Bestsellers, August 2020
The Locus Bestsellers for August include top titles The City We Became and The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, Dune by Frank Herbert, and Star Wars: Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn.
| HARDCOVERS | Months on list |
Last month |
|
| 1) | The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) | 3 | 1 |
| 2) | Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing) | 1 | – |
| 3) | Shakespeare for Squirrels, Christopher Moore (Morrow) | 1 | – |
| 4) | House of Earth and Blood, Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury US) | 1 | – |
| 5) | The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune (Tor) | 2 | 3 |
| *) | The Last Emperox, John Scalzi (Tor) | 2 | 2 |
| 7) | Smoke Bitten, Patricia Briggs (Ace) | 3 | 4 |
| PAPERBACKS | |||
| 1) | Dune, Frank Herbert (Ace) | 40 | 1 |
| *) | The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss (DAW) | 76 | – |
| 3) | Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (Morrow) | 30 | – |
| 4) | The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) | 17 | – |
| 5) | Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) | 7 | – |
| 6) | Neuromancer, William Gibson (Ace) | 5 | – |
| 7) | Midnight Riot, Ben Aaronovitch (Del Rey) | 5 | – |
| 8) | Storm Cursed, Patricia Briggs (Ace) | 3 | – |
| 9) | Storm Front, Jim Butcher | 9 | – |
| 10) | The Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi (Tor) | 9 | – |
| TRADE PAPERBACKS | |||
| 1) | The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) | 41 | 6 |
| 2) | The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook) | 1 | – |
| 3) | Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey) | 3 | 2 |
| *) | The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) | 9 | – |
| 5) | The Oppenheimer Alternative, Robert J. Sawyer (Caezik) | 1 | – |
| *) | Tiamat’s Wrath, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US) | 3 | – |
| 7) | Middlegame, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing) | 1 | – |
| 8) | Sword of Destiny, Andrzej Sapkowski (Orbit US) | 5 | – |
| 9) | Circe, Madeline Miller (Back Bay) | 1 | – |
| 10) | A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor) | 3 | 7 |
| MEDIA & GAMING RELATED | |||
| 1) | Star Wars: Thrawn: Treason, Timothy Zahn (Del Rey) | 6 | 1 |
| 2) | Star Wars: Ahsoka, E.K. Johnston (Lucasfilm) | 6 | – |
Coronavirus Edition: During May, the stay-at-home orders continued to affect most of our bookstores, with some closed, but most selling books online, by mail order, and via curbside pick-up. Also affecting the list was the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests. Uncle Hugo’s, a longtime contributor to our bestsellers list, was a casualty of the riots which accompanied the peaceful protests. (See the story in the July issue of Locus.)
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin continued to dominate the hardcover list with a win over the latest book in the Murderbot series, Martha Wells’s Network Effect, which came in second. There were no new runners-up. We had 47 nominated titles, up from last month’s 33.
On the paperback list, Dune by Frank Herbert remained in first place, sharing the honor with Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman and Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings tied for third. There were no new runners-up. There were 44 titles nominated, up from 41 last month.
N.K. Jemisin earned another win with The Fifth Season barely edging out our second place finisher, The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, on the trade paperback list. The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (Tor.com) was our new runner-up. We had 47 titles nominated, up from 44 last month.
Votes were sparse and tight on our media and gaming related books list. Only two books made our list, and of those two books Star Wars: Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn claimed the first place with a single vote over E.K. Johnston’s Star Wars: Ahsoka, our second place finisher. There were no new runners-up. We had 17 nominated titles, up from last month’s six.
Compiled with data from Bakka-Phoenix Books (Canada), Borderlands (CA), McNally Robinson (Canada), Mysterious Galaxy (CA), Toadstool (NH), White Dwarf (Canada).
Data period: May 2020.
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 August 2020 issue of Locus.
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