O’Brien died Saturday after a long illness, according to a statement by her publisher Faber and the literary agency PFD.

“A defiant and courageous spirit, Edna constantly strove to break new artistic ground, to write truthfully, from a place of deep feeling,” Faber said. “The vitality of her prose was a mirror of her zest for life: she was the very best company, kind, generous, mischievous, brave.” She is survived by her sons, Marcus and Carlos.

O’Brien published more than 20 books, most of them novels and story collections, and would know fully what she called the “extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success and failure, fame and slaughter.” Few so concretely and poetically challenged Ireland’s religious, sexual and gender boundaries. Few wrote so fiercely, so sensually about loneliness, rebellion, desire and persecution.

“O’Brien is attracted to taboos just as they break, to the place of greatest heat and darkness and, you might even say, danger to her mortal soul,” Booker Prize winner Anne Enright wrote of her in The Guardian in 2012.

A world traveler in mind and body, O’Brien was as likely to imagine the longings of an Irish nun as to take in a man’s “boyish smile” in the midst of a “ponderous London club.” She befriended movie stars and heads of state while also writing sympathetically about Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams and meeting with female farm workers in Nigeria who feared abduction by Boko Haram.

O’Brien was an unknown about to turn 30, living with her husband and two small children outside of London, when “The Country Girls” made her Ireland’s most notorious exile since James Joyce. Written in just three weeks and published in 1960, for an advance of roughly $75, “The Country Girls” follows the lives of two young women: Caithleen (Kate) Brady and Bridget (Baba) Brennan journey from a rural convent to the risks and adventures of Dublin. Admirers were as caught up in their defiance and awakening as would-be censors were enraged by such passages as “He opened his braces and let his trousers slip down around the ankles” and “He patted my knees with his other hand. I was excited and warm and violent.”

Fame, wanted or otherwise, was O’Brien’s ever after. Her novel was praised and purchased in London and New York while back in Ireland it was labeled “filth” by Minister of Justice Charles Haughey and burned publicly in O’Brien’s hometown of Tuamgraney, County Clare. Detractors also included O’Brien’s parents and her husband, the author Ernest Gebler, from whom she was already becoming estranged.

“I had left the spare copy on the hall table for my husband to read, should he wish, and one morning he surprised me by appearing quite early in the doorway of the kitchen, the manuscript in his hand,” she wrote in her memoir “Country Girl,” published in 2012. “He had read it. Yes, he had to concede that despite everything, I had done it, and then he said something that was the death knell of the already ailing marriage — ‘You can write and I will never forgive you.’”

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She continued the stories of Kate and Baba in “The Lonely Girl” and “Girls in Their Married Bliss” and by the mid-1960s was single and enjoying the prime of “Swinging London”: whether socializing with Princess Margaret and Marianne Faithfull, or having a fling with actor Robert Mitchum (“I bet you never tasted white peaches,” he said upon meeting her). Another night, she was escorted home by Paul McCartney, who asked to see her children, picked up her son’s guitar and improvised a song that included the lines about O’Brien “She’ll have you sighing/ She’ll have you crying/ Hey/ She’ll blow your mind away.”

Enright would call O’Brien “the first Irish woman ever to have sex. For some decades, indeed, she was the only Irish woman to have had sex — the rest just had children.”

O’Brien was recognized well beyond the world of books. The 1980s British band Dexy’s Midnight Runners named her alongside Eugene O’Neill, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and others in the literary tribute “Burn It Down.” She dined at the White House with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jack Nicholson, and she befriended Jacqueline Kennedy, whom she remembered as a “creature of paradoxes. While being private and immured she also had a hunger for intimacy — it was as if the barriers she had put up needed at times to be battered down.”

O’Brien related well to Kennedy’s reticence, and longing. The literary world gossiped about the author’s love life, but O’Brien’s deepest existence was on the page, from addressing a present that seemed without boundaries (“She longed to be free and young and naked with all the men in the world making love to her, all at once,” one of her characters thinks) to sorting out a past that seemed all boundaries — “the don’ts and the don’ts and the don’ts.”

In her story “The Love Object,” the narrator confronts her lust, and love, for an adulterous family man who need only say her name to make her legs tremble. “Long Distance” arrives at the end of an affair as a man and woman struggle to recapture their feelings for each other, haunted by grudges and mistrust:

“Love, she thought, is like nature but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.”

“A Scandalous Woman” follows the stifling of a lively young Irish nonconformist — part of that “small solidarity of scandalous women who had conceived children without securing fathers” — and ends with O’Brien’s condemning her country as a “land of shame, a land of murder and a land of strange sacrificial women.” In “My Two Mothers,” the narrator prays for the chance to “begin our journey all over again, to live our lives as they should have been lived, happy, trusting, and free of shame.”

O’Brien’s other books included the erotic novel “August Is a Wicked Month,” which drew upon her time with Mitchum and was banned in parts of Ireland; “Down By The River,” based on a true story about a teenage Irish girl who becomes pregnant after being raped by her father; and the autobiographical “The Light of Evening,” in which a famous author returns to Ireland to see her ailing mother. “Girl,” a novel about victims of Boko Haram, came out in 2019.

O’Brien is among the most notable authors never to win the Nobel or even the Booker Prize. Her honors did include an Irish Book Award for lifetime achievement, the PEN/Nabokov prize and the Frank O’Connor award in 2011 for her story collection “Saints and Sinners,” for which she was praised by poet and award judge Thomas McCarthy as “the one who kept speaking when everyone else stopped talking about being an Irish woman.”

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Josephine Edna O’Brien was one of four children raised on a farm where “the relics of riches remained. It was a life full of contradictions. We had an avenue, but it was full of potholes; there was a gatehouse, but another couple lived there.” Her father was a violent alcoholic, her mother a talented letter writer who disapproved of her daughter’s profession, possibly out of jealousy. Lena O’Brien’s hold on her daughter’s imagination, the force of her regrets, made her a lifelong muse and a near stand-in for Ireland itself, “the cupboard with all things in it, the tabernacle with God in it, the lake with the legends in it.”

Like Kate and Baba in “The Country Girls,” O’Brien was educated in part at a convent, “dour years” made feverish by a disorienting crush she developed on one of the nuns. Language, too, was a temptation, and signpost, like the words she came upon on the back of her prayer book: “Lord, rebuke me not in thy wraith, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.”

“What did it mean?” she remembered thinking. “It didn’t matter what it meant. It would carry me through lessons and theorems and soggy meat and cabbage, because now, in secret, I had been drawn into the wild heart of things.”

By her early 20s, she was working in a pharmacy in Dublin and reading Tolstoy and Thackeray, among others, in her spare time. She had dreams of writing since she sneaked out to nearby fields as a child to work on stories, but doubted the relevance of her life until she read a Joyce anthology and learned that “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” was autobiographical. She began writing fiction that ran in the literary magazine The Bell and found work reviewing manuscripts for the publishing house Hutchinson, where editors were impressed enough by her summaries to commission what became “The Country Girls.”

“I cried a lot writing ‘The Country Girls,’ but scarcely noticed the tears. Anyhow, they were good tears. They touched on feelings that I did not know I had. Before my eyes, infinitely clear, came that former world in which I believed our fields and hollows had some old music slumbering in them, centuries old,” she wrote in her memoir.

“The words poured out of me, and the pen above the paper was not moving fast enough, so that I sometimes feared they would be lost forever.”

An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales were barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A (b) indicates that some bookstores reported receiving bulk orders.

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FICTION

1. A DEATH IN CORNWALL, by Daniel Silva. (Harper) The 24th book in the Gabriel Allon series. Gabriel forges six Impressionist canvases and enlists an unlikely team of operatives to go after a new foe.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

2. THE WOMEN, by Kristin Hannah. (St. Martin’s) In 1965, a nursing student follows her brother to serve during the Vietnam War and returns to a divided America.

LAST WEEK: 1

WEEKS ON LIST: 23

3. THE SUMMER PACT, by Emily Giffin. (Ballantine) Ten years after a tragedy close to graduation, Hannah and her college friends grapple with turning points in their lives.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

4. SWAN SONG, by Elin Hilderbrand. (Little, Brown) Nantucket residents are alarmed when a home, recently sold at an exorbitant price, goes up in flames and someone goes missing.

LAST WEEK: 2

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

5. FOURTH WING, by Rebecca Yarros. (Red Tower) Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.

LAST WEEK: 6

WEEKS ON LIST: 62

6. IRON FLAME, by Rebecca Yarros. (Red Tower) The second book in the Empyrean  series. Violet Sorrengail’s next round of training might require her to betray the man she loves.

LAST WEEK: 10

WEEKS ON LIST: 36

7. THE SPELLSHOP, by Sarah Beth Durst. (Bramble) When the Great Library of Alyssium is set aflame, Kiela and Caz take the spellbooks and bring magic to Kiela’s childhood home.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

8. FUNNY STORY, by Emily Henry. (Berkley) After their exes run off together, Daphne and Miles form a friendship and concoct a plan involving misleading photos.

LAST WEEK: 7

WEEKS ON LIST: 12

9. ERUPTION, by Michael Crichton and James Patterson. (Little, Brown) The Big Island of Hawaii comes under threat by a volcano at the same time a secret held by the military comes to light.

LAST WEEK: 4

WEEKS ON LIST: 6

10. THE GOD OF THE WOODS, by Liz Moore. (Riverhead) When a 13-year-old girl disappears from an Adirondack summer camp in 1975, secrets kept by the Van Laar family emerge.

LAST WEEK: 3

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

11. CAMINO GHOSTS, by John Grisham. (Doubleday) The third book in the Camino series. The last living inhabitant of a deserted island gets in the way of a resort developer.

LAST WEEK: 5

WEEKS ON LIST: 7

12. YOU LIKE IT DARKER, by Stephen King. (Scribner) A dozen short stories that explore darkness in literal and metaphorical forms.

LAST WEEK: 8

WEEKS ON LIST: 8

13. THE MIDNIGHT FEAST, by Lucy Foley. (Morrow) An opening night party turns deadly at a luxury resort located near an ancient forest.

LAST WEEK: 11

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

14. THE BRIAR CLUB, by Kate Quinn. (Morrow) During the McCarthy era, Grace March’s bonds with her oddball neighbors at a female boardinghouse are tested.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

15. ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, by Chris Whitaker. (Crown) Questions arise when a boy saves the daughter of a wealthy family amid a string of disappearances in a Missouri town in 1975.

LAST WEEK: 9

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

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NONFICTION

1. THE ANXIOUS GENERATION, by Jonathan Haidt. (Penguin Press) A co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind” looks at the mental health effects of a phone-based life on children.

LAST WEEK: 1

WEEKS ON LIST: 16

2. THE DEMON OF UNREST, by Erik Larson. (Crown) The author of “The Splendid and the Vile” portrays the months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War.

LAST WEEK: 2

WEEKS ON LIST: 11

3. THE WAR ON WARRIORS, by Pete Hegseth. (Broadside) The “Fox & Friends Weekend” host shares his experiences in the Army and his views on the state of the American military.

LAST WEEK: 6

WEEKS ON LIST: 6

4. TRUE GRETCH, by Gretchen Whitmer with Lisa Dickey. (Simon & Schuster) The governor of Michigan recounts defining moments from her life and time in office.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

5. ON CALL, by Anthony S. Fauci. (Viking) The physician-scientist and immunologist chronicles his six decades of public service, including his work during the AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

LAST WEEK: 3

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

6. NUCLEAR WAR, by Annie Jacobsen. (Dutton) The author of “Operation Paperclip” portrays possible outcomes in the minutes after a nuclear missile launch.

LAST WEEK: 14

WEEKS ON LIST: 7

7. THE SINGULARITY IS NEARER, by Ray Kurzweil. (Viking) A look at the potentially positive and negative aspects of biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.

LAST WEEK: 4

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

8. OUTLIVE, by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford. (Harmony) A look at recent scientific research on aging and longevity.

LAST WEEK: 9

WEEKS ON LIST: 68

9. ASK NOT, by Maureen Callahan. (Little, Brown) The author of “American Predator” puts forward a history of the Kennedy family that describes the abuse of women in its orbit.

LAST WEEK: 5

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

10. THE WAGER, by David Grann. (Doubleday) The survivors of a shipwrecked British vessel on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain have different accounts of events.

LAST WEEK: 10

WEEKS ON LIST: 63

11. AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Simon & Schuster) A trove of items collected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian’s late husband inspired an appraisal of central figures and pivotal moments of the 1960s.

LAST WEEK: 11

WEEKS ON LIST: 12

12. WHAT THIS COMEDIAN SAID WILL SHOCK YOU, by Bill Maher. (Simon & Schuster) The host of “Real Time With Bill Maher” gives his take on a variety of subjects in American culture and politics.

LAST WEEK: 8

WEEKS ON LIST: 8

13. WE ARE EXPERIENCING A SLIGHT DELAY, by Gary Janetti. (Harper) The author of “Start Without Me” recalls trips he has taken to various parts of the world.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

14. THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB, by Griffin Dunne. (Penguin Press) The actor and director mixes stories from his family with tales of celebrities.

LAST WEEK: 12

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

15. I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED, by Jennette McCurdy. (Simon & Schuster) The actor and filmmaker describes her eating disorders and difficult relationship with her mother.

LAST WEEK: 13

WEEKS ON LIST: 87

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The New York Times bestsellers are compiled and archived by the bestseller lists desk of the New York Times news department and are separate from the culture, advertising and business sides of The New York Times Co. More information on rankings and methodology: nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology.

Every week, thousands of diverse selling locations report their actual sales on hundreds of thousands of individual titles. The panel of reporting retailers is comprehensive and reflects sales in stores of all sizes and demographics across the United States.

Picture Book rankings include hardcover sales only. Series rankings include all print and e-book sales.  An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales were barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A (b) indicates that some bookstores reported receiving bulk orders. 

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PICTURE

1. DRAGONS LOVE TACOS, by Adam Rubin. Illustrated by Daniel Salmieri. (Dial) What to serve your dragon guests. (Ages 3 to 5)

WEEKS ON LIST: 450

2. BLUEY: SLEEPYTIME, by Joe Brumm. (Penguin) Bingo wants to do a big girl sleep and wake up in her own bed. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 25

3. THE WONDERFUL THINGS YOU WILL BE, by Emily Winfield Martin. (Random House) A celebration of possibilities. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 401

4. THE DAY THE CRAYONS QUIT, by Drew Daywalt. Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. (Philomel) Problems arise when Duncan’s crayons revolt. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 390

5. TAYLOR SWIFT, by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara. Illustrated by Borghild Fallberg. (Frances Lincoln) A biography of the pop star. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

6. HOW TO CATCH A UNICORN, by Adam Wallace. Illustrated by Andy Elkerton. (Sourcebooks Wonderland) Children try to capture the mythical creature. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 50

7. PETE THE CAT SCREAMS FOR ICE CREAM!, by James Dean and Kimberly Dean. (HarperCollins) Pete eagerly awaits the ice cream truck. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

8. MILLIE FLEUR’S POISON GARDEN, by Christy Mandin. (Orchard) Garden Glen is transformed when Millie’s garden comes to town. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

9. THE BIG CHEESE, by Jory John. Illustrated by Pete Oswald. (HarperCollins) The Big Cheese learns a lesson in humility. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 17

10. TIME FOR SCHOOL, LITTLE BLUE TRUCK, by Alice Schertle. Illustrated by Jill McElmurry. (Clarion) Blue gives a friend a ride to school. (Ages 4 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 37

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MIDDLE GRADE HARDCOVER

1. WONDER, by R.J. Palacio. (Knopf) A boy with a facial deformity starts school. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 451

2. REFUGEE, by Alan Gratz. (Scholastic) Three children in three conflicts look for safe haven. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 265

3. HEROES, by Alan Gratz. (Scholastic) Friends Frank and Stanley give a vivid account of the Pearl Harbor attack. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 23

4. THE SUN AND THE STAR, by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro. (Disney Hyperion) Demigods Will and Nico embark on a dangerous journey to the Underworld to rescue an old friend. (Ages 10 to 14)

WEEKS ON LIST: 63

5. ODDER, by Katherine Applegate. Illustrated by Charles Santoso. (Feiwel & Friends) After a shark attack, Odder recuperates at the aquarium with the scientists who raised her. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 82

6. THEY CALL ME NO SAM!, by Drew Daywalt. Illustrated by Mike Lowery. (Clarion) A pug named Sam protects his family. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 6

7. WINGS OF FIRE: A GUIDE TO THE DRAGON WORLD, by Tui T. Sutherland. Illustrated by Joy Ang. (Scholastic) A deeper dive into the legends of the 10 dragon tribes. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 39

8. THE COMPLETE COOKBOOK FOR YOUNG CHEFS, by America’s Test Kitchen Kids. (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky) More than 100 kid-tested recipes from America’s Test Kitchen. (Ages 8 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 207

9. THE MISFITS: A ROYAL CONUNDRUM, by Lisa Yee. Illustrated by Dan Santat. (Random House) Olive is sent to Reforming Arts School and teams up with a group of crime-fighting outcasts. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 14

10. FAKER, by Gordon Korman. (Scholastic) Trey grows tired of running scams with his father and longs for a different way of life. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

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YOUNG ADULT HARDCOVER

1. THE DARKNESS WITHIN US, by Tricia Levenseller. (Feiwel & Friends) When Chrysantha’s husband, the Duke of Pholios, dies, she believes she’s the sole heir to his fortune. Until Eryx Demos arrives and claims to be the duke’s estranged grandson. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

2. DIVINE RIVALS, by Rebecca Ross. (Wednesday) Two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 56

3. THE SHADOWS BETWEEN US, by Tricia Levenseller. (Feiwel & Friends) Alessandra plots to kill the Shadow King and take his kingdom for herself. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

4. THE REAPPEARANCE OF RACHEL PRICE, by Holly Jackson. (Delacorte) Annabel Price’s mother is presumed dead, until she reappears during the filming of a documentary about her disappearance. (Ages 14 to 17)

WEEKS ON LIST: 15

5. RUTHLESS VOWS, by Rebecca Ross. (Wednesday) In the sequel to “Divine Rivals,” Roman and Iris will risk their hearts and futures to change the tides of the war. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 29

6. NIGHTBANE, by Alex Aster. (Amulet) In this sequel to “Lightlark,” Isla must choose between her two powerful lovers. (Ages 13 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 36

7. MURTAGH, by Christopher Paolini. (Knopf) Murtagh and his dragon, Thorn, must find and outwit a mysterious witch. (Ages 12 to 15)

WEEKS ON LIST: 36

8. TWO SIDES TO EVERY MURDER, by Danielle Valentine. (Putnam) When Camp Lost Lake reopens 16 years after brutal murders have taken place there, two girls arrive to look for answers to their mysterious pasts. (Ages 12 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

9. SWEET NIGHTMARE, by Tracy Wolff. (Entangled Teen) Clementine would love to leave Calder Academy, the boarding school for rogue paranormals, but her mother, the headmaster, will not have it. (Ages 14 to 17)

WEEKS ON LIST: 10

10. BETTING ON YOU, by Lynn Painter. (Simon & Schuster) Charlie and Bailey place bets on the love lives of others, while fighting their feelings for each other. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 17

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SERIES

1. THE POWERLESS TRILOGY, by Lauren Roberts. (Simon and Schuster) A story of forbidden love between Paedyn, an Ordinary, and Kai, an Elite, in the kingdom of Ilya. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

2. A GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO MURDER, by Holly Jackson. (Delacorte) Pippa Fitz-Amobi solves murderous crimes. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 146

3. DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. (Amulet) The travails and challenges of adolescence. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 800

4. HARRY POTTER, by J.K. Rowling. (Scholastic) A wizard hones his conjuring skills in the service of fighting evil. (Ages 10 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 799

5. BOYS OF TOMMEN, by Chloe Walsh. (Bloom) In Ireland, friends at the private school Tommen College prepare for adulthood. (Ages 16 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 10

6. THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY TRILOGY, by Jenny Han. (Simon & Schuster) A beach house, summer love and enduring friendships. (Ages 12 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 117

7. THE WILD ROBOT, by Peter Brown. (Little, Brown) Roz the robot adapts to her surroundings on a remote, wild island. (Ages 7 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 25

8. ONCE UPON A BROKEN HEART, by Stephanie Garber. (Flatiron) The story of Evangeline Fox, Jacks, the Prince of Hearts and the pursuit of true love. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 16

9. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS, by Rick Riordan. (Disney-Hyperion) A boy battles mythological monsters. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 733

10. THE INHERITANCE GAMES, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. (Little, Brown) Avery Grambs tries to figure out why a stranger left her an inheritance. (Ages 12 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 84

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The New York Times bestsellers are compiled and archived by the bestseller lists desk of the New York Times news department and are separate from the culture, advertising and business sides of The New York Times Co. More information on rankings and methodology: nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology.

There’s a lot to unpack in Steve Hoffman’s new memoir.

On the surface, “A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France” chronicles the six months Hoffman and his family — wife and fellow author Mary Jo and their two children — spent immersed in a small winemaking village in southern France more than a decade ago.

But it’s also a journey of self-discovery, as Hoffman talks readers through his complicated relationship with France, from a Minnesota high school kid learning the language, to a stint in Paris in his early 20s, to falling in love with the Languedoc region as an adult.

It’s a story of a husband and father wanting his family to share his love of France, and how this adventure changed their dynamic — and their futures.

But it’s also about friendship, how Hoffman worked to set aside his idyllic vision of Paris to become part of the village of Autignac, where neighbors became family and local winemakers became close friends. About how the experience upended the way Hoffman, a tax preparer and award-winning food writer from Shoreview, views not only French food and wine but what it means to belong.

And, finally, it’s a lesson in patience.

“It took me about eight years to write the book,” Hoffman said. “It took me that long to give the book time to find itself, to become what it needed to be, to express what that experience meant.”

Ahead of the book’s release, we talked to Hoffman about getting out of his comfort zone, the importance of culinary traditions and how this epic trip changed his relationship with food, wine, France and family. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The French way of life has been a constant thread in your life. Why?

I think it started with the fact that I was able, from a young age, to speak French fairly easily, and there was this feeling of inhabiting a new person when I was speaking French that I found intoxicating. But I was still just a French student until that year in Paris. That manifested what I had felt but never experienced, which is that this language allowed me to essentially be a different person, and a far more interesting and romantic figure — to me — than Steve Hoffman, tennis player and student at Ramsey High School in Roseville, Minnesota.

Cooking plays an important role in the book. Did you cook before you went to France?

I loved to strap on an apron on a Sunday afternoon and open a bottle of wine and spend two or three hours making something complicated and ambitious and making a bunch of dishes. I did cook for the kids when they were young, but I was a recipe follower. I was not somebody who could go to the grocery store or get a CSA and make something with most of what he would find in his kitchen. That was very much an evolution that happened during that trip.

Of all the meals that you cooked in France, which one stands out?

Just grilling fresh sardines over a vine-wood fire in our courtyard with sea salt and a bunch of lemon juice, and picking those skeletons clean. It was just such a simple, beautifully Mediterranean way of preparing that very Mediterranean fish.

Did your experience change the way you cook at home?

I started cooking more often, and spent a lot of time trying to find the recipes that I could make fairly easily that were full of flavor that the kids would love. And I feel as if I did. I’m kind of proud of this, because I didn’t have this as a child. I didn’t have a tradition to draw from, a mother who cooked or a grandmother who cooked. That wasn’t part of our family.

If you’re looking for a taste of France in Minnesota, what do you cook?

Now that we’re here, we’re more focused on how do we translate the spirit of what we did there. We’re still surrounded with beautiful food in Minnesota. How do we make it flavorful? How do we fashion it into dishes that people we love and that our family will love and crave?

You worked in the vineyards. How did that change your relationship with wine?

I was interested in wine previously as an element of a good life. It was very much a part of my relationship with France, but it had more to do with knowing regions and knowing grapes, being able to pick out the notes that come out of a glass of wine. It was very removed from vines and soil and plots of land. And that was really the shift. And it shifted my entire approach to wine, the reasons that I valued wine. It was such an agricultural experience. It allowed me to see from literally the ground up how you take these base materials and slowly move them through this process to turn them into something transcendent in a glass.

At times you longed for comfort, yet you were constantly out of your comfort zone. How did you reconcile that?

That’s a great question. I arrived with a notion in my head that I was just automatically a happier and better person in France. And it just happened without any particular effort on my part because I could speak the language. The lifestyle was conducive to what I love, which is food, wine and a sort of sophisticated European way of moving through your day. I was going there expecting that I would be in my comfort zone, that I would be the French speaker who would help my family fall in love with France. And it would be as simple as that.

And?

Early on Mary Jo was really insistent saying, “Wait a minute, this isn’t working. We’re not going to be a part of the Steve Hoffman show while you go have nice experiences at cafes. … You need to make something happen here. Or this whole dream of France doesn’t really make sense.” So I was faced with this dilemma of, yes, I can stay in my comfort zone and it can be a pretty little trip, but at the risk of maybe losing France in some way. Or I can get out of my comfort zone and start making something happen, that potentially gets us what we wanted in the first place, which is to become part of the fabric of this little village.

Mary Jo seems like the voice of tough love and reality.

Absolutely, and has been for much of our marriage.

I have mad respect for that.

It’s not an easy thing to do. She had both the wisdom to recognize that it wasn’t going that way, and the courage to risk a little bit of conflict in order to engineer something better, knowing that because she didn’t speak the language, she couldn’t just step in and do it. She needed me to do it. I could have been super resentful, or I could have gone into a self-defensive mode. You know, she really kind of risked something by stepping up and having that conversation with me.

You talked about feeling like the Steve you wanted to be. How has that translated into Steve now?

There was that slow movement toward realization, and it happened in part through cooking. My initial efforts were to try to cook like a French chef, which led to this breakthrough of the cooking that I want to do is for this family. Yes, I want to have fun with these beautiful ingredients. And I want to cook good food that people love, but I want to cook it for this family. By the end of the book, I feel as if I had discovered that the best me was the me that was devoted to the few things around me that really meant something, primarily Mary Jo, Joe and Eva.

What was coming back to Minnesota like?

There was a kind of sadness to come back, you know? There was this feeling that we had really been through something that we couldn’t quite put into words, but that we felt really deeply. And there is an ordinariness to daily life that we had to contend with, and that we’re still contending with, even all these years later.

You kept journals during your during this trip. At what point did you say, hey, this should be a book?

Honestly, [former Taste editor] Lee Dean was one of the critical early supporters of my writing. I sent her one of my journal pieces. It was ridiculous. It was like 5,000 words long, but she had made it a point to always read anything submitted by a Minnesota writer, and she took the time to read it. It was obviously unpublishable in that form, but she saw something in my writing and invited me to submit letters from Languedoc to her. That was the turning point.

You’re a real estate broker, tax preparer, food writer and now an author. What’s your next season?

That is the question. I think ideally, it will bring a slow transition toward taking writing more seriously as an actual career as opposed to a side hustle. But I think the next season is Mary Jo [author of the blog and book “Still”] and me both taking these new creative careers and finding a way to create a body of work that we’re proud of, create a legacy that would involve working together on a project that is both of ours, in addition to doing whatever work we would do separately.

A decade ago, could you have imagined you both publishing books in the same year?

Never, never, never. One of our habits throughout our marriage has been to do five-year plans. And it’s been surprising how often everything on the list somehow happens. It seems that there’s a magic in writing it down and making it intentional. When we got back from this trip, we did a five-year plan, and it involved me maybe writing a book and possibly being on the kind of terms with a national food press where I could email, say, the editor of Food and Wine magazine and they would know who I was. And that was the most pie-in-the-sky, never-going-to-happen dreaming. And I’ll be damned if 10 years later, that hasn’t entirely come to pass. It’s absolutely still mind-boggling to us that we’ve reached this point.

Nicole Hvidsten is senior Taste editor at the Star Tribune (Minneapolis).

“Melania” is the “powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has defined personal excellence, overcome adversity, and carved her own path,” according to a description on her website.

Copies of the black-covered hardback book with “Melania” written in white sell for $40, while a signed copy goes for $75. Each of those versions include 48 pages of color photos. A collector’s edition, on which the color scheme is reversed, costs $150. That version is also signed and promises bonus photographs and a digital collectible. Both are published by Skyhorse.

Melania Trump’s life has long been shrouded in mystery. According to her White House biography page, she was born on April 26, 1970, in Novo Mesto, Slovenia.

As Melania Knauss, she worked as a model in Europe but became a household name after marrying real estate mogul Donald Trump in 2005 and taking his surname. She gave birth to her only child, Barron Trump, in 2006.

Melania Trump long claimed to have graduated from the University of Ljubljana with a degree in architecture, which has been proven false. She has also said she speaks five languages, which too has been called into question.

Rarely is the enigmatic 54-year-old fashionista seen alongside her husband on the campaign trail, where he’s making his third bid for the U.S. presidency.

Melania was also absent from her husband’s criminal trial in March, where a jury agreed he falsified New York business records to cover up a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels regarding an alleged affair he had while married to Melania Trump.

When he was found liable in January for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of rape, Melania kept a low profile as well. She rarely sits down for interviews, and when she does, they typically reveal very little.

One of her most talked about comments came in the form of a fashion statement. In 2018, she was photographed wearing a jacket with “I really don’t care, do you?” written across the back, while visiting a migrant children detention center in Texas. That outfit, she later said, was to tell “the left-wing media” she couldn’t be rattled.

It’s unclear to what degree Melania Trump’s memoir might address her husband’s trials and tribulations or how they’ve impacted her life. A spokesperson told The Associated Press no information was available other than the online press release from Skyhorse Publishing.

An exact release date for the book hasn’t been announced, though pre-order information on the website says to allow 12 to 16 weeks for delivery.

Q: Would you tell readers about your novel?

“The Ministry of Time” is a tragicomic time-travel romance about empire, bureaucracy and cigarettes. It follows Graham Gore, a Victorian naval officer and ‘expat’ from a doomed 19th century Arctic expedition to the 21st century; and the book’s narrator, his ‘bridge’ – a civil servant who works as a liaison, helpmeet and supervisor for expats from history. I was partly inspired by Graham Greene novels and James Bond films, partly inspired by the history of British polar exploration, and partly just really wanted to mash these two characters together like Barbie dolls to make them kiss.

Q: Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?

I don’t know about ‘always’ – it depends on the reader and the situation – but I can tell you I’ve been recommending “Beautyland” by Marie-Helene Bertino to everyone since I read it last month. It’s incredibly funny, it has a sort of deceptive weightlessness of prose that is doing major emotional heavy lifting, and it moved me so much that I finished it on a plane and was weeping so hard that I forgot I’m terrified of flying.

Incidentally, if anyone read that and thought, “Oh, I love novels that make me feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach [complimentary],” I also recommend “A Burning” by Megha Majumdar and “The Storm We Made” by Vanessa Chan.

Q: What are you reading now?

I’ve just finished “Real Americans” by Rachel Khong – what a belter of a novel! I slammed the last page at about 1 a.m. last night and went, “Now that’s writing!” to my fiancé (asleep). I’ve also been in a reading group for James Joyce’s “Ulysses” for the past nine months. We’re finishing the book on Bloomsday. I really don’t know what I’ll do when Joyce’s fart jokes are no longer a part of my regular reading landscape.

Q: How do you decide what to read next?

I have so many TBR piles around my house that the decision has been taken out of my hands. I’m trying to work my way through them.

Q: Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?

My joint edition of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll. It was the first book I read by myself as a small child. I thought – and still think – it was a stupendous work of playfulness and strangeness. I love the way Carroll treated language as plastic, elastic, and endlessly mouldable. I can still recite ‘Jabberwocky’ by heart and half the words in that aren’t real.

Q: Is there a book you’re nervous to read?

I’m planning on shunting the “Ulysses” gang into a long group read of “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo, but I’m worried it won’t be as fun (fewer fart jokes), or that we’ll lose momentum because it is so large and requires a fair bit of commitment. I’ve never even seen the musical so I don’t know what to expect. Anna Hathaway has a bad time, I think?

Q: Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind (or conversely, one that most definitely wasn’t)?

Pretty much anything written by Kingsley Amis feels like it was written against me, even as I find him very funny (in a ghastly way) and an effortless stylist. I identified with Margaret Peel in “Lucky Jim” out of sheer pique.

Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?

I recently read “The Conquest of Bread” by Peter Kropotkin and I was amazed by his empathy for and understanding of the contribution of unwaged domestic labour and care work – chiefly performed by women – to the economy and to communities. It really cheered me up to imagine that a man in 1892 (!!!) was already certain that the emancipation of women had to involve liberation from, or truly equal sharing of, those forms of unwaged labour.

Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?

Yes, it’s the cover of “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley, available from all good bookshops.

Q: Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?

I don’t listen to audiobooks. My brain goes for a walk and I miss key plot points. I’d experience “Anna Karenina” as a novella.

Q: Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?

I read a lot of literary fiction and classic fiction. I’d like to read more classic SFF. Over the course of the “Ministry” book tour, I’ve also met a lot of romance writers and booksellers, and I’ve found them so welcoming, smart and unpretentious. I’d love to read more romance.

Q: Do you have a favorite book or books?

Too many to list. I can tell you that my most re-read books are from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. They have sometimes felt like a life raft to me.

Q: Which books do you plan, or hope, to read next?

On the TBR pile next to my bed (as distinct from, say, the TBR pile in my office, the other TBR pile in my officer, and my TBR pile at work), the next two books are “Thousand Cranes” by Yasunari Kawabata (in Edward G. Seidensticker’s translation), and Aristotle’s “Poetics” (in Malcolm Heath’s translation). They are both extremely short. “Ulysses” has been so very long, you see. Brilliant, and one of the greatest novels I’ve ever read, but so. very. long.

Q: Is there a person who made impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?

My grandmother – my dad’s mother – wanted me to be Extremely Literate, on the grounds that this was how one got on in life. (Regrettably I think you have to be Extremely Numerate, which I am not.) I was given a copy of Lamb’s “Tales from Shakespeare” when I was a small child, along with the aforementioned copy of “Alice in Wonderland.” When I was about 11, she gave me “Frost in May” by Antonia White (she’d been brought up in a Catholic convent) which blew my tiny mind; and “Masquerade” by Kit Williams, which I was simply not clever enough to solve but I liked looking at anyway.

Q: What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?

The language. There’s no particular style that I prefer, but I most admire style that feels deliberate and crafted, that’s serving a particular purpose. I also like it when you can see the writer just doing gymnastics at sentence level. That’s very fun. I know that, e.g., Sheena Patel, Francis Spufford, Julia Armfield, Bryan Washington, Ben Marcus, Raven Leilani and A.K. Blakemore are all doing extremely different things – but I think they’re all being deliberate and also brilliant. This is also why I think translators are so important, and why it’s always worth naming the translator of a book; their creative and stylistic choices will change the way you read a work in translation.

Q: What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share? 

I read “As Meat Loves Salt” by Maria McCann when I had COVID during a 40-degree Celsius [104 degree Fahrenheit] heatwave and it felt like the text was happening just behind my left shoulder (I was very feverish). I got COVID again earlier this year, while I was reading “City of Corpses” by Yoko Ota (in Richard Minear’s translation). It’s about the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, which Ota survived. I do not recommend reading this book when you are very sick and distressed as it is.

Q: What’s something about your book that no one knows?

Well, that would be telling.

Q: If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?

Is “Les Misérables” any good?

For more about the novel, go to the Kaliane Bradley author page

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“Not Quite a Ghost” by Anne Ursu. (Ages 8-12. Walden Pond Press. $19.99.)

As the school year starts, Violet finds her life in a hopeless tangle. Middle school is starting, she’s moving into a new house … and she’s wary of spending time alone in her spooky attic room because there’s something haunting it, hidden behind the serpentine vines of the wallpaper: “This was going to be hard to explain to her parents.”

Violet’s old friendships seem to be curdling, and she is stuck in a merry-go-round of social awkwardness: a disastrous sleepover, cafeteria conflicts and — the horror! — gym class. Her response: “She might vomit. She might have a heart attack. She might vomit and have a heart attack at the same time.”

And then things get worse. When a mysterious illness colonizes her body, Violet struggles, suffers — and doubts herself, because her friends and doctors seem to think it’s all in her head.

Something spooky in the house senses her confusion and pain, and begins needling her: “They haven’t been able to find anything wrong with you, have they?”

The supernatural villain is scary, but Violet’s undiagnosed illness might be even scarier, and the parallels between a haunting no one else can see and health problems that elude doctors are painfully clear. As it turns out, Violet is stronger than that voice, and stronger than the doubters — and with a little help from new friends and a family who believe in her, she finds a way forward.

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“Wicked Marigold” by Caroline Carlson. (Ages 8-12. Candlewick Press. $17.99.)

Princess Rosalind is so delightful that flowers spring up in her footsteps and animals become tame at her glance, and when she is kidnapped by an evil wizard, the kingdom goes into mourning.

But this is not Rosalind’s story. This is the very funny, slightly spooky, thoroughly entertaining story of her not-so-perfect sister Marigold, who comes face-to-face with that perfection when Rosalind mysteriously returns from captivity.

“Rosalind’s perfect. Rosalind doesn’t sneak through walls or clamber on rooftops, and she certainly doesn’t stomp,” Marigold laments as she stomps as hard as she can.

The answer, obviously, is that Marigold needs to balance that sweetness and light by being as wicked as she can possibly be — in other words, by presenting herself on the doorstep of the wizard who had held Rosalind and declaring herself ready for an apprenticeship in magical mayhem.

What could go wrong — other than the fact that wizard assistance is mostly housework, and she perhaps turned her wizard into a blob of goop by accident, and his friends and associates are horrible? “Of course all the clients are awful,” sighs Pettifog, the nattily dressed demon who holds the magical household together. “Who else do you think would hire an evil wizard?”

In the end, of course, Marigold figures some things out — among them, how “evil” she really is, how to make peace with a perfect sibling, how to undo a spell gone awry, and how it feels to be turned into a beetle. She does indeed find her happy-ish ending, but the great joy of this novel is in the saucily funny details of life in the service of evil (or, truthfully, in the service of the somewhat naughty), and readers will be cheering for Marigold — and wishing for a longer stay in her magical world.

Caroline Luzzatto has taught preschool and fourth grade. Reach her at luzzatto.bookworms@gmail.com

Such a rare occurrence is the launching point for Julia Phillips’ second novel, “Bear,” the moody and affecting follow-up to her bestselling debut, the 2019 National Book Award finalist “Disappearing Earth.” That book, which began with the abduction of two sisters, created deep pools of pathos and suspense by spreading its narrative over a range of characters in the girls’ remote home, the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.

In “Bear,” Phillips has found another evocative setting, San Juan Island, on which to craft another story of hard-luck sisters, this time the 20-somethings Sam and Elena, who live with their dying 51-year-old mother in a “1979 vinyl-sided nightmare” surrounded by swank summer homes.

But the symphonic narration of “Disappearing Earth” has given way here to a soloist. “Bear” is told through the close third-person point of view of the younger sister, Sam, who bitterly toils away inside a ferry for $24 an hour, selling coffee and snacks to “people who treated her like a peasant.” One day, Sam wanders on deck, looks down at the water and sees something remarkable. “A shape broke the surface. A creature. Moving.”

It’s a marvelous opening, but riding shotgun for the next 270 sparely written pages with such a brittle protagonist proves wearying. Sam suffers her dead-end job, her mother’s illness, her class anger and her slim prospects. (“How exhausting. This slog. Endless.”) She distrusts anyone who tries to help her: friendly neighbor, attractive wildlife expert, even her seemingly attentive lover. “It wasn’t fair that Ben should move around, rent his own place, go fishing when he felt like it,” Phillips writes. “It enraged her.”

The only person in the world Sam doesn’t seem to resent is her beloved older sister, Elena, a freer, less-troubled soul. When the swimming bear — an even rarer and scarier grizzly — shows up outside their home, Elena sees it as a sign. “The bear was their one good thing, a specter, a spirit, an extraordinary beast,” she tells her sister, “teaching them what it was to love living, helping them to make it through.”

But Sam is unconvinced. Her fear and obsessive anxiety over the bear grow in inverse relation to her sister’s mystical fixation. Elena leaves food out for the beast; Sam reports it to wildlife officials. Elena goes for walks with her new friend; Sam seeks out bear spray and, eventually, a Chekhovian gun.

For Sam, the bear would seem to be a shifting symbol, not just of impending death but for all that threatens the girls’ once-idyllic island life: outsiders coming between them; their mother’s abusive ex-boyfriend (or, perhaps, the violent nature of all men); even the unfairness of late-stage American capitalism.

But symbolic bears are way less hairy than real ones, and Phillips has made this one a compelling, visceral beast: massive and smelly, with huge teeth and jaws, who, when he’s not sniffing around the girls’ home, spends his vacation sampling local deer and livestock.

Sure, he might walk Elena to and from the country club where she works as a waitress, and, yes, the bear seems to enjoy heart-to-hearts with her in the woods, but Phillips smartly keeps us guessing whether the fantastical creature ultimately sees Elena as friend or feast.

Phillips is working in high fairy-tale register here. “Like Cinderella picking lentils from the ashes,” she writes, “Sam was a nobody doing work that meant nothing, but no prince was ever going to pluck her out of this … Elena was the only one who was going to save her from this place. They were going to have to save each other.”

The suspense rises in the last third, when, eschewing the Disneyfication of fairy tales, and cleverly hewing to the darker weirdness of an actual Grimm tale, “Snow White and Red Rose,” Phillips rolls out one last, haunting symbol for the bear to embody — the mysterious bonds and dangerous fissures of sisterhood.

This gives the novel its slow-burning power, as Sam’s vision of their seemingly perfect childhood (“sisters crouched on the forest floor of their property, studying mushrooms, telling each other stories”) crashes against the divergent desires of adult life.

“Bear” ends with a bang, and with the intriguing notion that sisterhood (or sisters?) may be as unknowable and unpredictable as anything else in nature. As Sam observes of Elena late in the novel, “Something else had pushed her to this point. A thing stranger, wilder. Bestial.”

Jess Walter is the author of 10 books, most recently the story collection “The Angel of Rome.”

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About the book

“BEAR”

Julia Phillips

Hogarth. 304 pp. $28.

Every week, thousands of diverse selling locations report their actual sales on hundreds of thousands of individual titles. The panel of reporting retailers is comprehensive and reflects sales in stores of all sizes and demographics across the United States.

An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales were barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A (b) indicates that some bookstores reported receiving bulk orders.

___

FICTION

1. THE WOMEN, by Kristin Hannah. (St. Martin’s) In 1965, a nursing student follows her brother to serve during the Vietnam War and returns to a divided America.

LAST WEEK: 1

WEEKS ON LIST: 22

2. SWAN SONG, by Elin Hilderbrand. (Little, Brown) Nantucket residents are alarmed when a home, recently sold at an exorbitant price, goes up in flames and someone goes missing.

LAST WEEK: 2

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

3. THE GOD OF THE WOODS, by Liz Moore. (Riverhead) When a 13-year-old girl disappears from an Adirondack summer camp in 1975, secrets kept by the Van Laar family emerge.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

4. ERUPTION, by Michael Crichton and James Patterson. (Little, Brown) The Big Island of Hawaii comes under threat by a volcano at the same time a secret held by the military comes to light.

LAST WEEK: 4

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

5. CAMINO GHOSTS, by John Grisham. (Doubleday) The third book in the “Camino” series. The last living inhabitant of a deserted island gets in the way of a resort developer.

LAST WEEK: 6

WEEKS ON LIST: 6

6. FOURTH WING, by Rebecca Yarros. (Red Tower) Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.

LAST WEEK: 10

WEEKS ON LIST: 61

7. FUNNY STORY, by Emily Henry. (Berkley) After their exes run off together, Daphne and Miles form a friendship and concoct a plan involving misleading photos.

LAST WEEK: 8

WEEKS ON LIST: 11

8. YOU LIKE IT DARKER, by Stephen King. (Scribner) A dozen short stories that explore darkness in literal and metaphorical forms.

LAST WEEK: 7

WEEKS ON LIST: 7

9. ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, by Chris Whitaker. (Crown) Questions arise when a boy saves the daughter of a wealthy family amid a string of disappearances in a Missouri town in 1975.

LAST WEEK: 3

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

10. IRON FLAME, by Rebecca Yarros. (Red Tower) The second book in the “Empyrean” series. Violet Sorrengail’s next round of training might require her to betray the man she loves.

LAST WEEK: 11

WEEKS ON LIST: 35

11. THE MIDNIGHT FEAST, by Lucy Foley. (Morrow) An opening night party turns deadly at a luxury resort located near an ancient forest.

LAST WEEK: 9

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

 12. THE NIGHT ENDS WITH FIRE, by K.X. Song. (Ace) The Three Kingdoms are at war and Meilin disguises herself as a boy and enlists in the army in her father’s place.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

13. MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, by Riley Sager. (Dutton) Thirty years after the disappearance of his friend, Ethan returns to his childhood home and encounters unsettling experiences.

LAST WEEK: 12

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

14. JAMES, by Percival Everett. (Doubleday) A reimagining of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” shines a different light on Mark Twain’s classic, revealing new facets of the character of Jim.

LAST WEEK: 15

WEEKS ON LIST: 12

15. SANDWICH, by Catherine Newman. (Harper) During a summer vacation in Cape Cod, Rocky faces changes with her family, body and life.

LAST WEEK: 14

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

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NONFICTION

1. THE ANXIOUS GENERATION, by Jonathan Haidt. (Penguin Press) A co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind” looks at the mental health impacts that a phone-based life has on children.

LAST WEEK: 2

WEEKS ON LIST: 15

2. THE DEMON OF UNREST, by Erik Larson. (Crown) The author of “The Splendid and the Vile” portrays the months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War.

LAST WEEK: 3

WEEKS ON LIST: 10

3. ON CALL, by Anthony S. Fauci. (Viking) The physician-scientist and immunologist chronicles his six decades of public service, including his work during the AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

LAST WEEK: 1

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

4. THE SINGULARITY IS NEARER, by Ray Kurzweil. (Viking) A look at the potentially positive and negative aspects of biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.

LAST WEEK: 4

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

5. ASK NOT, by Maureen Callahan. (Little, Brown) The author of “American Predator” puts forward a history of the Kennedy family that describes the abuse of women in its orbit.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

6. THE WAR ON WARRIORS, by Pete Hegseth. (Broadside) The “Fox & Friends Weekend” host shares his experiences serving in the Army and his views on the current state of the American military.

LAST WEEK: 8

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

7. THE SITUATION ROOM, by George Stephanopoulos with Lisa Dickey. (Grand Central) The ABC host and former adviser to President Bill Clinton describes the location where and conditions under which a dozen presidential administrations handled crises.

LAST WEEK: 11

WEEKS ON LIST: 8

8. WHAT THIS COMEDIAN SAID WILL SHOCK YOU, by Bill Maher. (Simon & Schuster) The host of “Real Time With Bill Maher” gives his take on a variety of subjects in American culture and politics.

LAST WEEK: 5

WEEKS ON LIST: 7

9. OUTLIVE, by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford. (Harmony) A look at recent scientific research on aging and longevity.

LAST WEEK: 10

WEEKS ON LIST: 67

10. THE WAGER, by David Grann. (Doubleday) The survivors of a shipwrecked British vessel on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain have different accounts of events.

LAST WEEK: 9

WEEKS ON LIST: 62

11. AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Simon & Schuster) A trove of items collected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian’s late husband inspired an appraisal of central figures and pivotal moments of the 1960s.

LAST WEEK: 6

WEEKS ON LIST: 11

12. THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB, by Griffin Dunne. (Penguin Press) The actor and director mixes stories from his family with tales of celebrities.

LAST WEEK: 13

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

13. I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED, by Jennette McCurdy. (Simon & Schuster) The actor and filmmaker describes her eating disorders and difficult relationship with her mother.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 86

14. NUCLEAR WAR, by Annie Jacobsen. (Dutton) The author of “Operation Paperclip” portrays possible outcomes in the minutes following a nuclear missile launch.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 6

15. LOVE & WHISKEY, by Fawn Weaver. (Melcher Media) A portrayal of the bond between Jack Daniel and African American distiller Nearest Green.

LAST WEEK: 7

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

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The New York Times bestsellers are compiled and archived by the bestseller lists desk of the New York Times news department and are separate from the culture, advertising and business sides of The New York Times Co. More information on rankings and methodology: nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology.

Every week, thousands of diverse selling locations report their actual sales on hundreds of thousands of individual titles. The panel of reporting retailers is comprehensive and reflects sales in stores of all sizes and demographics across the United States.

An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales were barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A (b) indicates that some bookstores reported receiving bulk orders.

___

PICTURE

1. BLUEY: SLEEPYTIME, by Joe Brumm. (Penguin) Bingo wants to do a big girl sleep and wake up in her own bed. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 24

2. DRAGONS LOVE TACOS, by Adam Rubin. Illustrated by Daniel Salmieri. (Dial) What to serve your dragon-guests. (Ages 3 to 5)

WEEKS ON LIST: 449

3. THE WONDERFUL THINGS YOU WILL BE, by Emily Winfield Martin. (Random House) A celebration of possibilities. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 400

4. THE DAY THE CRAYONS QUIT, by Drew Daywalt. Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. (Philomel) Problems arise when Duncan’s crayons revolt. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 389

5. PETE THE CAT SCREAMS FOR ICE CREAM!, by James Dean and Kimberly Dean. (HarperCollins) Pete eagerly awaits the arrival of the ice cream truck. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

6. TAYLOR SWIFT, by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara. Illustrated by Borghild Fallberg. (Frances Lincoln) A biography of the pop star. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

7. MILLIE FLEUR’S POISON GARDEN, by Christy Mandin. (Orchard) Garden Glen is transformed when Millie’s garden comes to town. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

8. TIME FOR SCHOOL, LITTLE BLUE TRUCK, by Alice Schertle. Illustrated by Jill McElmurry. (Clarion) Blue gives a friend a ride to school. (Ages 4 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 36

9. HOW TO CATCH A MERMAID, by Adam Wallace. Illustrated by Andy Elkerton. (Sourcebooks Wonderland) A young girl tries to catch a mermaid and befriend her. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 23

10. THE SMART COOKIE, by Jory John. Illustrated by Pete Oswald. (Harper) Cookie builds up her self-confidence. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 22

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MIDDLE GRADE HARDCOVER

1. REFUGEE, by Alan Gratz. (Scholastic) Three children in three  conflicts look for safe haven. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 264

2. WONDER, by R.J. Palacio. (Knopf) A boy with a facial deformity starts school. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 450

3. HEROES, by Alan Gratz. (Scholastic) Friends Frank and Stanley give a vivid account of the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 22

 4. FAKER, by Gordon Korman. (Scholastic) Trey grows tired of running scams with his father and longs for a different way of life. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

5. THE SUN AND THE STAR, by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro. (Disney Hyperion) Demigods Will and Nico embark on a dangerous journey to the Underworld to rescue an old friend. (Ages 10 to 14)

WEEKS ON LIST: 62

6. THEY CALL ME NO SAM!, by Drew Daywalt. Illustrated by Mike Lowery. (Clarion) A pug named Sam protects his family. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

7. WINGS OF FIRE: A GUIDE TO THE DRAGON WORLD, by Tui T. Sutherland. Illustrated by Joy Ang. (Scholastic) A deeper dive into the legends of the 10 dragon tribes. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 38

8. THE MISFITS: A ROYAL CONUNDRUM, by Lisa Yee. Illustrated by Dan Santat. (Random House) Olive is sent to Reforming Arts School and teams up with a group of crime-fighting outcasts. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 13

9. ODDER, by Katherine Applegate. Illustrated by Charles Santoso. (Feiwel & Friends) After a shark attack, Odder recuperates at the aquarium with the scientists who raised her. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 81

10. THE COMPLETE COOKBOOK FOR YOUNG CHEFS, by America’s Test Kitchen Kids. (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky) More than 100 kid-tested recipes from America’s Test Kitchen. (Ages 8 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 206

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YOUNG ADULT HARDCOVER

1. THE REAPPEARANCE OF RACHEL PRICE, by Holly Jackson. (Delacorte) Annabel Price’s mother is presumed dead, until she reappears during the filming of a documentary about her disappearance. (Ages 14 to 17)

WEEKS ON LIST: 14

2. DIVINE RIVALS, by Rebecca Ross. (Wednesday) Two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 55

3. THE SHADOWS BETWEEN US, by Tricia Levenseller. (Feiwel & Friends) Alessandra plots to kill the Shadow King and take his kingdom for herself. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

4. NIGHTBANE, by Alex Aster. (Amulet) In this sequel to “Lightlark,” Isla must choose between her two powerful lovers. (Ages 13 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 35

5. TWO SIDES TO EVERY MURDER, by Danielle Valentine. (Putnam) When Camp Lost Lake reopens 16 years after brutal murders there, two girls arrive to look for answers to their mysterious pasts. (Ages 12 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

6. RUTHLESS VOWS, by Rebecca Ross. (Wednesday) In the sequel to “Divine Rivals,” Roman and Iris will risk their hearts and futures to change the tides of the war. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 28

7. MURTAGH, by Christopher Paolini. (Knopf) Murtagh and his dragon, Thorn, must find and outwit a mysterious witch. (Ages 12 to 15)

WEEKS ON LIST: 35

8. SWEET NIGHTMARE, by Tracy Wolff. (Entangled Teen) Clementine would love to leave Calder Academy, the boarding school for rogue paranormals, but her mother, the headmaster, will not have it. (Ages 14 to 17)

WEEKS ON LIST: 9

9. HEARTLESS HUNTER, by Kristen Ciccarelli. (Wednesday) Rune, a witch, and Gideon, a witch hunter, fall in love. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 14

10. BETTING ON YOU, by Lynn Painter. (Simon & Schuster) Charlie and Bailey place bets on the love lives of others while fighting the feelings they have for each other. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 16

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SERIES

1. THE POWERLESS TRILOGY, by Lauren Roberts. (Simon and Schuster) A story of forbidden love between Paedyn, an Ordinary, and Kai, an Elite, in the kingdom of Ilya. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

2. A GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO MURDER, by Holly Jackson. (Delacorte) Pippa Fitz-Amobi solves murderous crimes. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 145

3. DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. (Amulet) The travails and challenges of adolescence. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 799

4. THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY TRILOGY, by Jenny Han. (Simon & Schuster) A beach house, summer love and enduring friendships. (Ages 12 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 116

5. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS, by Rick Riordan. (Disney-Hyperion) A boy battles mythological monsters. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 732

6. HARRY POTTER, by J.K. Rowling. (Scholastic) A wizard hones his conjuring skills in the service of fighting evil. (Ages 10 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 798

7. LEGACY OF ORÏSHA, by Tomi Adeyemi. (Holt) Zélie Adebola fights to bring magic back to the land of Orïsha. (Ages 14 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

8. THE WILD ROBOT, by Peter Brown. (Little, Brown) Roz the robot adapts to her surroundings on a remote, wild island. (Ages 7 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 24

9. THE HUNGER GAMES, by Suzanne Collins. (Scholastic) In a dystopia, a girl fights on live TV to survive. (Ages 12 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 334

10. WHO WAS/IS …?, by Jim Gigliotti and others; various illustrators. (Penguin Workshop) Biographies unlock legendary lives. (Ages 8 to 11)

WEEKS ON LIST: 162

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The New York Times bestsellers are compiled and archived by the bestseller lists desk of the New York Times news department and are separate from the culture, advertising and business sides of The New York Times Co. More information on rankings and methodology: nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology.