“Last week we had a thrilling and wonderful grand-opening celebration, including a magical sold-out in-person event with Sarah Smarsh. In fact, that magic is reflected in this week’s bestsellers,” the Raven Book Store says.

Making their debuts this week are not one but two locally published, neighborhood-focused nonfiction projects, covering East Lawrence and Old West Lawrence. 

The bestseller list nicely reflects everything people have come to seek from the Raven: exciting new mysteries, bestsellers, backlist classics, social justice, science, poetry, and local titles like the new-classic Ladybird Collected, once again taking the top spot.

Lots of new faces on this week’s bestseller list.

I think a big question for publishing in the coming Fall Big Book season is how interested people will be in reading about the former president. A wave of postmortems is on the way, and one of the first arrives at No. 5 on this week’s list.

This week’s bestseller list is dominated by Raven Favorite Grady Hendrix’s clever new horror novel The Final Girl Support Group. The strong sales come on the heels of a wonderful virtual event. You can still catch the replay.

Last week I was feeling proud and inspired that four of our weekly bestsellers were local titles. Well, this week features SEVEN local titles, including two from Sarah Henning!

Every bookstore is a reflection of its local community, and our local community has some pretty good taste.

Fun fact: the top three bestsellers this week are also the top three bestsellers of 2021 so far, halfway in!