Book notes

Watermark Books & Cafe

Bestsellers

1. “Circe” by Madeline Miller

2. “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett

3. “Too Much and Never Enough” by Mary L. Trump

4. “The Butterfly Lampshade” by Aimee Bender

5. “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell

New and notable

“The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals: A Novel” by Becky Mandelbaum (Simon & Schuster, $26) From Kansas native and winner of the 2016 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction comes a tender and funny debut novel, set over one emotionally charged weekend at an animal sanctuary in western Kansas. Watermark Books will host author Becky Mandelbaum for a Virtual Event at 6 p.m. Aug. 18.

“Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, $32) The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of “The Warmth of Other Suns” examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

Eighth Day Books

Bestsellers

1. “The Eagle of the Ninth (The Roman Britain Trilogy)” by Rosemary Sutcliffe

2. “The Quest for Cosmic Justice” by Thomas Sowell

3. “Charter Schools and Their Enemies” Thomas Sowell

4. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

5. “A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader” by Maria Popova

New and notable

“Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer” by John Bowers (Oxford, $32.95). Uncovers the story of an unpublished and previously unknown book by the author of “The Lord of the Rings”. Tolkien worked between 1922 and 1928 on his Clarendon edition of Chaucer, and though never completed, its 160 pages of commentary reveals much of his thinking about language and storytelling.

“In the Sanctuary of Outcasts” by Neil White (Harper, $16.99). Following conviction for bank fraud, White spent a year in a minimum-security prison in Carville, Louisiana, housed in the last leper colony in mainland America. His memoir reflects on the lepers living alongside the prisoners, one of whom helps bring about White’s personal redemption.

National best-sellers

Fiction

1. “1st Case” Patterson/Tebbetts.

2. “The Vanishing Half” Brit Bennett.

3. “The Order” Daniel Silva.

4. Near Dark. Brad Thor.

5. 28 Summers. Elin Hilderbrand.

Nonfiction

1. “Too Much and Never Enough” Mary L. Trump

2. “How to Be an Antiracist” Ibram X. Kendi

3. “The Plus” Greg Gutfeld

4. “How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps” Ben Shapiro

5. “Untamed” Glennon Doyle