Locus Bestsellers, April 2023
The Locus Bestsellers for December include top titles: Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo (Flatiron), Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (Tor), Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree (Tor), and Star Wars: Stories of Jedi and Sith, Jennifer Heddle, ed. (Disney Lucasfilm Press).
| HARDCOVERS | Months on list |
Last month |
|
| 1) | Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo (Flatiron) | 1 | – |
| 2) | Babel, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager) | 6 | 1 |
| 3) | How to Sell a Haunted House, Grady Hendrix (Berkley) | 1 | – |
| 4) | A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Becky Chambers (Tordotcom) | 6 | 7 |
| *) | The World We Make, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) | 3 | 3 |
| 6) | The Golden Enclaves, Naomi Novik (Del Rey) | 5 | 6 |
| 7) | Fairy Tale, Stephen King (Scribner) | 5 | 8 |
| 8) | The Fall of Númenor, J.R.R. Tolkien (Morrow) | 2 | 5 |
| 9) | Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett (Del Rey) | 1 | – |
| 10) | The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin) | 12 | – |
| *) | Mistborn: Secret History, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) | 1 | – |
| PAPERBACKS | |||
| 1) | Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) | 26 | 1 |
| 2) | Hyperion, Dan Simmons (Bantam Spectra) | 7 | – |
| 3) | Dune, Frank Herbert (Ace) | 71 | 2 |
| 4) | Stardust, Neil Gaiman (Morrow) | 2 | – |
| 5) | The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin (Ace) | 22 | 3 |
| 6) | To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Christopher Paolini (Tor) | 4 | 9 |
| 7) | Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) | 7 | – |
| *) | The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) | 41 | 4 |
| 9) | Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert (Ace) | 22 | 8 |
| *) | Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin (Bantam) | 9 | 6 |
| TRADE PAPERBACKS | |||
| 1) | Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree (Tor) | 3 | 1 |
| 2) | The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu (Tor) | 50 | – |
| 3) | A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury US) | 9 | 4 |
| 4) | The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury US) | 14 | 5 |
| 5) | A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury US) | 6 | – |
| 6) | A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik (Del Rey) | 14 | 10 |
| 7) | Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir (Ballantine) | 4 | 9 |
| 8) | The Stardust Thief, Chelsea Abdullah (Orbit US) | 1 | – |
| 9) | Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir (Ballantine) | 22 | 3 |
| 10) | Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom | 21 | 6 |
| MEDIA & GAMING-RELATED | |||
| 1) | Star Wars: Stories of Jedi and Sith, Jennifer Heddle, ed. (Disney Lucasfilm Press) | 1 | 1 |
| 2) | Warhammer 40,000: Broken City, Anonymous, ed. (Warhammer Crime) https://bookshop.org/book/9780593498491 | 1 | – |
| 3) | Star Wars: The Princess and the Scoundrel, Beth Revis (Random House Worlds) | 2 | – |
In its first month of publication, Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo jumped to the top to the hardcover list with a decisive victory over our second-place finisher, and last month’s winner, R.F. Kuang’s Babel. Africa Risen edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, & Zelda Knight (Tordotcom), and Seanan McGuire’s Lost in the Moment and Found (Tordotcom) tied as our new runner-up. We had 43 nominated titles, up from 42 last month.
For the second month, Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson topped the paperback list, with Dan Simmon’s Hyperion, after a month away, in second. There were no new runners up. Sixty-one titles were nominated, up from last month’s 56.
On the trade paperback list, Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree held off all comers for a third month, remaining in first place with a substantial lead over Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem. Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock (Morrow) was our new runner-up. There were 62 nominated titles, down from last month’s 63.
Star Wars: Stories of Jedi and Sith edited by Jennifer Heddle barely edged out Warhammer 40,000: Broken City for the top spot on the Media-Related & Gaming-Related Books list. There were no new runners-up. We had 17 nominated titles, down from 24 last month.
Compiled with data from: Bakka-Phoenix (Canada), Book Moon (MA), Borderlands (CA), McNally Robinson (two in Canada), Mysterious Galaxy (CA), Toadstool (NH), White Dwarf (Canada).
Data period: January 2023.
Note: book titles and covers on this page link to IndieBound, a network of independent booksellers, such as those that contribute to this list.
See this listing and more like it in the March 2023 issue of Locus.
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