Proving once again that there’s nothing like controversy to help sell a book, Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer (Harper; HarperCollins audio; OverDrive Sample) debuts on the NYT Best Seller List at #2 for the week of May 24.

The book accuses the Clintons of selling influence to foreign governments and individuals through the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton campaign has fought back by identifying several factual errors. As a result, Harper has changed the Kindle version to delete passages or revise sections. As reported in Politico, Amazon sent purchasers a notice that “significant revisions have been made” to their electronic copies, which Harper then said were just  “7-8 factual corrections.”

Undaunted, Schweizer continues roiling up controversy. In the new issue of USA Today, he objects to his testy interview with George Stephanopoulos in April, saying he should get a do-over because the broadcaster did not reveal that he personally donated $75,000 to the Clinton campaign in 2012.

The author of the uber-bestselling The Girl on the Train (Penguin/Riverhead), Paula Hawkins tells The Daily Beast that she is at work on another psychological thriller that she hopes “to finish over the summer so that it hopefully will be out summer or autumn of next year.”

She adds, “It also deals quite a lot with memory issues, but in a different way. It’s about the memories we have from childhood and how the stories that we tell about ourselves and our families shape who we are.”

She drops no hints about the title and admits she is feeling the pressure to try to live up to the success of GOTT, but says she is persevering because she doesn’t want to “leave too big a gap between the first book and the second, because the longer that gap, the more terrifying the publication of the second book becomes.”

We’d gotten used to seeing Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See at #2 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list, tucked right behind the juggernaut of The Girl on the Train. But then Harlan Coben’s The Stranger came along and knocked it into third place. Last week, J.R. Ward’s The Shadows cast it into fourth place and it looked like the beginning of a slide.

But this week, The Light has returned to its old spot, banishing The Shadows altogether and moving The Stranger down to 4th position (The Girl on the Train keeps chugging along at #1).

The novel took Doerr ten years to write, a journey he described last month in Scribner Magazine.

A year ago, before the book became a best seller, Doerr talked about the places and ideas that inspired him.

Sara Gruen’s At The Water’s Edge (RH/Spiegel & Grau; BOT Audio; RH Large Print; Overdrive Sample) debuts at the highest spot ever for the author (#6 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list and #12 on USA Today‘s general list).

Her 2006 novel, Water for Elephants was a slow build, eventually hitting #1 in paperback in anticipation of the movie starring Reese Witherspoon. Her next book, 2010’s Ape House debuted at #8 on the NYT list (#65 on USA Today‘s), lasting just a few weeks.

The new success is featured in both the NYT “Inside the List” column and USA Today, “Sara Gruen’s Loch Ness novel is a hit.”

Gruen herself is not so worried about matching her earlier success. As she tells NPR’s Weekend Edition, “I don’t tend to think ‘oh, I peaked at 38,’ I tend to think ‘I’m so happy about what happened with Water for Elephants, but I know I was struck by lightning’ … it’s not going to happen again and that’s ok. I get to keep doing what I love to do.”

While lightning may not strike twice, it appears Water’s Edge will attract a wider audience than did Ape House and fulfill predictions from collection development librarians that it will circulate briskly through the summer. It is rising on Amazon sales rankings this week and most libraries show growing holds.

The NYT trade paperback list offers the tale of another slow build, similar to Water for Elephants. Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, (RH/Crown, 2011) hits the Trade Paperback Fiction list for the first time, after several weeks on the extended list (the hardcover also spent a few weeks on the extended list), probably based on news that Steven Spielberg has signed to direct the film adaptation as well as anticipation of the release of the next title, Armada (RH/Crown, RH & BOT Audio), set for publication on July 24th.

Cline will be one of the featured speakers the AAP/LibraryReads Dinner during BEA this year.

It may have slipped to #2 on yesterday’s  USA Today’s best-seller list, but Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Penguin/Riverhead) is still number one on the just-released NYT Hardcover Fiction list, with Harlan Coben’s The Stranger (Penguin/Dutton) at #2. Still going strong after 47 weeks is All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (S&S/Scribner) at #3. We issued a holds alert for that book almost one year ago.

The Publishers Weekly/BooScan list shows that GOTT sold 5,000 more copies at the retailers they survey than Coben’s book.

Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Penguin/Riverhead) has slipped off the tracks, getting replaced as the top book on USA Today’s best-seller list by Harlan Coben’s The Stranger (Penguin/Dutton; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Girl on the Train ruled the top of the USA Today list for over a month but is now in the No. 2 spot.

In toppling Hawkins from her reigning position, Coben achieved what James Patterson could not. As we reported last week, Patterson’s newest, NYPD Red 3 (Hachette/Little, Brown), hit USA Today’s list in second place, behind GOTT. It has since slipped to the No. 5 spot.

Most libraries routinely buy more copies of Patterson then they do of Coben. It may be time to rethink that.

The best seller logjam has not broken. On the 4/5 NYT Hardcover Fiction list, the number one and two spots are occupied, as they have been for weeks, by Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Penguin/Riverhead) and Anthony Doerr’s  All the Light We Cannot See, (S&S/Scribner). Even a new book by James Patterson can’t break through. His latest, with Marshall Karp, NYPD Red 3 (Hachette/Little, Brown) arrives at #3.

Other lists, however, show a different story. USA Today‘s has the Patterson title at #2, after The Girl on the Train as does the PW/Bookscan list. On the Indie Best Seller list, however, NYPD Red 3 arrives at a lowly #12.

Meanwhile, Hausfrau, by Jill Essbaum, (Random House; RH Audio), heavily considered a successor to The Girl On The Train, just squeaks onto the main list at #16, in a tie with #15, The Whites, by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt (Macmillan/Holt).

The NYT‘s “Inside the List” column may bring more readers to Hausfrau, as it promotes the book’s erotic side, noting that the author, a poet, is “no stranger to the naughty bits.” Others, like Time magazine, have put it another way, “Anna Karenina Goes Fifty Shades With a Side of Madame Bovary.”

Going right to #1 on the 3/29 NYT Hardcover Nonfiction list after its first week on sale, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (RH/Crown; RH and BOT Audio; RH Large Print) proves that Erik Larson has the magic touch.

Further, the USA Today list, which combines all genres and formats, shows it is the second best selling book in the country, behind The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, (Penguin/Riverhead; Thorndike; BOT Audio Clip; OverDrive Sample) at #1 after nine weeks.

Despite several less than enthusiastic reviews, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample) arrives at #3 on the NYT March 22nd Fiction Hardcover best sellers list, just below the log jam of The Girl on the Train at #1 after 8 weeks and All the Light We Cannot See at #2 after 44 weeks.

This is the first time that Ishiguro has hit the hardcover lists. As Gregory Cowles notes in the “Inside the List” column, his previous best sellers, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go became best sellers but in paperback, as a result of their movie adaptations.

Film rights have already been acquired for The Buried Giant, by “The Godfather of the Literary Adaptation,” producer Scott Rudin (Captain Philips, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moneyball, Angela’s Ashes and the upcoming Jobs, among many others).

As we predicted last week, the memoir phenomenon, H is for Hawk (Grove Press; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample), rises on the 3/15 NYT Hardcover Nonfiction best seller list from #8 to #5. More attention (and reprints) are on their way, so next week may see it rising even higher.

Landing at #2 in its first week on sale is a quite different memoir, by one of the founding band members of Sonic Youth,  Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band (HarperCollins/Dey Street; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) Those sales were recorded before her appearance on Fresh Air this week.

Debuting at #3 is a title featured on NPR’s TED Radio Hour, Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It, Marc Goodman, (RH/Doubleday; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample)

The idea of never aging continues to appeal. Arriving at #9 is journalist Bill Gifford’s investigation of the various schemes to achieve that goal,  Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying), (Hachette/Grand Central). It was featured in Fresh Air.

And in fiction, The Girl on the Train continues to roar along at #1 after 7 weeks on the list, six of them in the top spot. The new fiction entries are all from the usual suspects.

As we’ve been tracking, H is for Hawk (Grove Press; OverDrive Sample), Helen Macdonald’s memoir has been enjoying remarkable reviews and now, it debuts on the 3/8  NYT Nonfiction list at #8.

We’re a bit surprised, because its official pub date isn’t until next week, but the book actually shipped last month. Gregory Cowles notes in his Inside the List column that Macdonald has been flummoxed by the response the book’s already received in the U.K. (her actual quote, from  the Belfast Telegraph is, “That threw me into a massive wobble!”). We can expect it to rise higher on next week’s list, which will reflect the impact from the raves in this week’s People and Entertainment Weekly.

The author responded yesterday to the tweeted news from her publisher:

Blimey! I can’t do cartwheels, so I just did a celebratory forward roll. #happyH
— Helen Macdonald (@HelenJMacdonald)

Arriving at #11 is another memoir that has received media attention, combat photojournalist Lynsey Addario’s  It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (Penguin, Feb. 10; OverDrive Sample).

On the Young Adult list, The DUFF: (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) by Kody Keplinger (Hachette/Poppy) arrives at #2, its first appearance since being published in 2010, as a result of  the promotion for a film adaptation, which arrived in theaters last week. A low-budget film (which may be the reason the publisher decided to only release the tie-in as an eBook), its “respectable” success is being attributed to an effective social marketing campaign, which may have also driven interest in the book. (View trailer here and see “What Makes The DUFF This Generation’s Mean Girls“)

Further down, at #7 is a standalone eBook short story from Cassandra Clare, Welcome To Shadowhunter Academy, the first in the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, a series of ten eBooks which will be publised monthly, as announced last fall in Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” column. It is available both in eBook ( ISBN 9781481443142) and downloadable audio (ISBN 9781442383937).

In fiction, The Girl on the Train continues to chug along at #1 with no slowdown in sight. Publishers Weekly compares the BookScan numbers to those for another well-known blockbuster and finds “The Girl on the Train has pulled well ahead of where Gone Girl was six weeks in. At that point, Gillian Flynn’s book had sold 116K units total [which is below GOTT‘s more than 230K units], was #3 on the week’s Hardcover Fiction list, and was the #11 book overall.” Holds in libraries we checked for GOTT are continuing at a steady rate of 4:1.

The new arrivals on the 3/1 NYT Hardcover Fiction list (sales for week of Feb. 7) are all from the usual suspects, except for David Duchovny, whose first novel, Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale (Macmillan/FSG; OverDrive Sample) squeaks in at #16, in a tie with #15, Anita Daimant’s The Boston Girl, on the list for 10 weeks.

The Washington Post reviewed Duchovny’s effort approvingly as a “zany, madcap first novel,” while the Daily Beast characterizes it as “funny in parts and cringeworthy in others (expect a lot of puns). At times Duchovny’s conceit can produce moments where you nod appreciatively, and others like a Family Guy tangent that just doesn’t land.” Library holds are generally in line with modest orders.

On the extended list, we’re pleased to see one of our Penguin First Flights titles, M.O. Walsh’s My Sunshine Away (Penguin/Putnam; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample; BOT Audio Clip) arrive at #18, after a string of laudatory reviews, the latest in People.  That issue hit stands after sales were recorded for the week, so it may propel it onto the next week’s main list.

And, The Girl on the Train continues to speed along at #1 after 5 weeks, with All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr right behind it at #2.

Nonfiction

Believer: My Forty Years in Politics (Penguin; OverDrive Sample) arrives at #3, after much media attention, including an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by scientist Yuval Noah Harari (Harper; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample), arrives at #7 after a feature on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Children’s Picture Books

Last Stop On Market Street  Matt de la Peña, illus. by Christian Robinson (Penguin/Putnam; Recorded Books)

The author’s second picture book, after six Y.A. titles, is his first best seller, arriving at #4. It was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition. It is described by the author as a “quiet little book about a boy and his grandma riding the bus from church to their soup kitchen. ”

Children’s Middle Grade

Pluto, R. J. Palacio (RH/Knopf eBook only, 9780553499094; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Wonder continues at #1 on the list after 116 weeks, so it’s no surprise that the publisher would like to see a sequel. Palacio (aka Raquel Jaramillo), tells Publishers Weekly she was resistant to that idea, considering the book a standalone. But she liked the idea of “an expansion of the Wonder universe,” via books that tell the story from different viewpoints. The first The Julian Chapter, also released as an eBook hit this list when it was published and now Pluto continues the tradition.

Young Adult

Debuting solidly at #1 is the heavily promoted debut, Red Queen, by Victoria Aveyard (HarperTeen; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample), the first in a projected trilogy. Film rights were optioned by Universal prior to publication, which is probably the reason the book’s cover was revealed by The Hollywood Reporter.

Several new titles debut on the 2/22 NYT Fiction Best Sellers list, including Tim Johnston’s Descent (Workman/Algonquin; OverDrive Sample; Jan 6), a book we have been watching (see our Jan 8th Readers Advisory).

The cover features a blurb from Lisa Unger, whose new book Crash and Burn also debuts this week. She describes Descent as a “pulse-pounding thriller of the first order … a truly captivating read.” The Washington Post‘s Patrick Anderson went further, saying, “The story unfolds brilliantly, always surprisingly, but the glory of Descent lies not in its plot but in the quality of the writing.”

Johnston’s first adult novel (he published the YA title Never So Green and a book of short stories, Irish Girl), it is his first best seller.

The other debuts are more expected. Most were covered in our Titles to Know column:

#3  The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audiol OverDrive Sample)

# 4 Trigger Warning, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) — reviewed on the NPR Web site. with this great analogy, “They are confections, these stories. Like eating a delicious piece of chocolate and, halfway through, finding a finger in it. “

#7  Crash & Burn, Lisa Gardner (Penguin/Dutton; OverDrive Sample)

#9 Funny Girl, Nick Hornby, (Penguin/Riverhead; BOT; OverDrive Sample), also covered in the NYT‘s “Inside the List” column

And, The Girl on the Train continues to ride at #1 after 4 weeks.

On the Nonfiction list, Alexandra Fuller’s third memoir Leaving Before the Rains Come, (Penguin Press, Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample) rises after 3 weeks to #5. Strong reviews continue to rain down on it, the latest from yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, appreciates the author’s growth. “Fuller’s first memoir, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, presented readers with the unstinting rollick of her African childhood” and “Leaving Before the Rains Come, circles back and through to the man she marries in the final pages of Dogs [and] remembers the shock and awe of early love. It traces the dissolution of bonds.”

Several other titles are debuts

#10 The Teenage Brain, by Frances E. Jensen with Amy Ellis Nutt (Harper; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) — as we wrote earlier, this one was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air.

#11  Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice (S&S; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample) — the author was featured on several shows, but the clincher was his appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Coverage continues with Entertainment Weekly, which makes in #3 on their “Must List of the :Top 10 Things We Love This Week.”

#14 The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity Norman Doidge (Penguin/ Viking; Penguin Audio) — This may sound like voodoo science, but The Guardian, writes, “Doidge is, if not the inventor, then at least the populariser of a brand new science. That science is called neuroplasticity” which says the brain can not only self-repair, but, “for conditions that range from Parkinson’s disease, to autism, to stroke, to traumatic head injury – can be stimulated by conscious habits of thought and action, by teaching the brain to “rewire itself”.”

In children’s books, the ALA awards announced at Midwinter are having an effect.

In childrens, the Caldecott winner, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Sentat (Hachette/Little, Brown), arrives at #10 on the Picture Books list, and the winner of the Newbery, The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), makes its first appearance at #4 on the Middle Grade list.

On the Graphic Books list, Scott McCloud’s heavily anticipated master work, The Sculptor (Macmillan/First Second) lands at #1 during its first week on sale.

Shortly after appearing at Midwinter, Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train (Penguin/Riverhead; OverDrive Sample), appeared on today’s CBS This Morning.

She says she is already at work on the next book and admits that she has drunk canned gin and tonics.

At #2 on the 2/15/15 NYT Nonfiction Hardcover list is a book that many have had trouble getting their hands on, Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, (South Dakota State Historical Society Press). The book, which had an initial print run of just 15.000 copies, was sold out before Christmas. A second printing of 15,000 was released the week represented by the list and it is now out of stock on Amazon and wholesaler sites (some indies, like Powell’s have copies available). As NPR reported last week, a third printing, of 45,000 copies is in the works. If you haven’t been tracking this title, check EarlyWord‘s earlier coverage from  August, December and January.

Other notable new additions to the list:

#6 The Reaper, Nicholas Irving with Gary Brozek, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s) — with a cover that bears striking similarities to American Sniper, (Harper) as well as a similar subtitle, (author Irving is just “One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers” as opposed to Sniper‘s Kyle, who gets a higher billing as, “the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History“). Unsurprisingly, given the success of Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation of Sniper, rights were acquired to adapt The Reaper as a 5-part TV series by the Weinstein Co. No news yet on which network will air the series, but production is expected to begin this summer. We’re not seeing significant holds in libraries at this point.

#8  Ghettoside, Jill Leovy, (RH/Spiegel & Grau; OverDrive Sample) — as we wrote earlier, the author has been in the media, with appearances on The Daily Show and NPR’s Weekend Edition, The book has been reviewed widely, including   a cover review in the NYT Book Review. Holds are heavy in several libraries.