In Clubland

The Good Morning America Book Club pick for October, Mitch Albom’s Twice, lands on our hardcover fiction list at #2. According to our review, it’s “a clever tale of second chances and their limits.” In a prepub interview with PW, Albom explained why that tension was one he wanted to explore: “We live in a world of envy, always seeing people who we think have it better,” he said. “It just may be that you have to stop thinking about those other worlds and live the best way in this one.”

Ticket to Ride

A dozen years after the release of Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon returns with what our starred review called his “casually playful and chillingly resonant ninth novel,” Shadow Ticket. To boil down the hardboiled escapade, it follows a P.I. on the trail of a missing heiress in the 1930s. It’s also “a warning against global fascism, a slapstick symphony whose antic comedy can’t begin to conceal its hopelessly broken American heart,” according to the review. “Belying his reputation as an intimidating genius of weighty ideas and unresolved plots, Pynchon is simply telling it like it is: life is crushing, and nothing’s ever over. The novel’s heart-freezing finish is as plaintively moving as anything he’s ever done.”

Game On

Adam Gratz’s War Games lands at #12 on our children’s fiction list. According to our review of the “smartly plotted page-turner,” young athletes competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics “literally go for the gold upon becoming embroiled in a plot to rob the German national bank.” Gratz, who’s written several books set during that era, told PW that WWII stories resonate with middle school readers because “there’s not a lot of ambiguity: we were on the side of right, fought with others against an evil, and we won.”

Welcome Home

Jan Karon launched her Mitford series, set in a fictional North Carolina town and centered on the local rector, Father Tim Kavanagh, with 1994’s At Home in Mitford. The 14th installment, To Be Where You Are, pubbed in 2017, and this week, Father Tim is back in My Beloved, #9 on our hardcover fiction list. It’s “a charming story about a misplaced love letter that touches everyone who reads it,” per our review. “Karon infuses the story with down-home charm and an earnest belief in the importance of community, family, and grace.” Sales were strongest in the South Atlantic region, where the book sold about 70% more print units than the next-bestselling region.