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2026-10-19

Bestseller Brief: Five Books From One Tuesday — October 25, 2026

NYT Bestseller Brief
NYT Bestseller Brief@Julia C
Bestseller Brief: Five Books From One Tuesday — October 25, 2026

Every book on this week's show came out on the same day. Same Tuesday, two weeks ago, five hardcovers, and this morning four of them are sitting in the top five of their own lists.

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This week's edition covers the New York Times combined print and e-book lists dated October 25, 2026, the monthly Business list dated October 1, 2026, and the Amazon Charts week of October 11, 2026. The two instruments sit about two weeks apart and count different things: the Times counts a week of print and e-book sales across the market, while Amazon counts copies sold and pre-ordered through its own store. 1234
All five books below were published on the same day, October 6, 2026. Two weeks later they hold numbers one through four in fiction and number two in nonfiction, and the two lists disagree sharply about four of them. That disagreement is the most useful thing in the episode, because it tells you where each book is actually selling.
BookKind of bookTimesAmazon most soldPages
The WitchHaunted-house thrillerNo. 1 fictionNo. 1 fiction352
Other Worlds Than TheseDark fantasy, trilogy finaleNo. 3 fictionNo. 17 fiction704
PartitaLiterary novelNo. 4 fictionNo. 11 fiction352
BlockersPolitical and government reportingNo. 2 nonfictionNo. 5 nonfiction256
The AGI ChroniclesTechnology reportingNo. 11 nonfictionNot in the top 20448
Two fiction slots went to books already covered on this show, Threshing Day at No. 2 and The French Illusion at No. 5, along with four more repeats further down. Every book below is new to the show. 1

The Witch: the two-evening haunted house

Kind of book: Psychological thriller with a ghost in it, and a second timeline in 1692. It is a standalone, so there is no series to catch up on. 5
Where it sits: New at No. 1 on the combined and hardcover fiction lists, No. 1 on Amazon's most-sold fiction chart for the week of October 11, and No. 5 on its most-read chart. It is the only book this week to top a chart on both instruments. 14
Premise, spoiler-safe: Julia Barlow loses her job and her apartment, and the only place left to go is Pemberton, her family's seventeenth-century estate in rural Massachusetts. Officially she is there to check on her aging grandmother. Unofficially she wants somewhere to disappear. Then the grandfather clock starts stopping at 3:41 every night, the lights flicker, and a voice outside her bedroom door asks for help. Digging into the house's history turns up a woman executed for witchcraft in 1692, and decades of family lies underneath. 56
Spoiler warning: The twist is the product. Go in cold.
Read it if: you want a book you can finish in two evenings, or you like a house that behaves like a character.
Skip it if: you want the ambiguity of literary horror. This one explains itself by the last chapter, and the 1692 material is seasoning rather than the meal.

Other Worlds Than These: the homecoming

Kind of book: Dark fantasy and supernatural thriller, and the third and final novel of the Talisman trilogy, after The Talisman (1984) and Black House (2001). 7
Where it sits: New at No. 3 on the combined fiction list and No. 4 on hardcover fiction, and No. 17 on Amazon's most-sold fiction chart. That is the widest gap between the two instruments this week. 14
Premise, spoiler-safe: Jack Sawyer, twelve years old when readers first met him, is older now, his ka-tet is fraying, and he has to stop a gang of infected teenagers rampaging on America-side and the forces of something called the Gullet at the edge of Mid-World. The publisher also frames the book as a wrap-up of the fate of the worlds in the Dark Tower epic. 7
Who is not the audience: The publisher says it reads as a stand-alone, and Booklist's starred review says new readers can enjoy it thoroughly. For a reader with no history here, 704 pages is an expensive way to test that claim.
Read it if: you have read The Talisman or Black House, or you came through the Dark Tower and want the last door closed. The book carries 36 black-and-white illustrations by Gabriel Rodriguez.
Skip it if: you have not read the earlier two. Start with The Talisman, which is far shorter. Also skip it if you want a King horror novel with no prior reading; this is a homecoming, not a first meeting.

Partita: the life you did not live

Kind of book: Literary novel, a dual timeline, and a Read With Jenna book club pick. 8
Where it sits: New at No. 4 on the combined fiction list and No. 11 on Amazon's most-sold fiction chart — a book selling better in shops than online. 14
What the title means: A partita is a musical form — a set of pieces played as one work. That is also the structure: a life told in movements.
Premise, spoiler-safe: Livia Cable has made her peace with a marriage and a modest living in the farm country where she grew up. Then an old lover telephones, and the call reopens a life she had closed. Decades earlier she was Livia Bohusz, a conservatory student with a real gift at the piano, estranged from her family, and this man broke her belief in love and bent the course of her life. The novel moves between then and now, with the memories framed as musical dances. 8
What it is about underneath: class barriers, the risks of ambition, who gets to make art and who has to give it up. Kirkus called it brilliant and affecting in a starred review; the Times put it on its ten-new-books list and praised how it writes about music and musicians. 8
Read it if: you loved Demon Copperhead and want the same moral seriousness at half the length, or you have wondered about the version of your life you did not take.
Skip it if: you need plot moving under you. Most of the drama happens inside one woman's head. The double timeline and the music talk are the texture of every page, not a garnish.

Blockers: six people in a building that stopped wanting them

Kind of book: Political and government reporting by the author of The Big Short, Moneyball and The Fifth Risk. It is this week's business and industry pick: about government rather than markets, with the same reporting method. 9
Where it sits: New at No. 2 on both the combined and hardcover nonfiction lists, and No. 5 on Amazon's most-sold nonfiction chart. 210
What it is about: the first stretch of the Department of Government Efficiency, told through six federal public servants it targeted. "Blocker" was the new Washington's word for a holdover, an impediment, someone who did not belong. One of the six kept the country's most sensitive tax data out of the wrong hands; one made sure politicians and civil servants played by the rules; one worked out how to stop wildfires from taking out suburban neighborhoods; one helped open up the science of cystic fibrosis; and there was a security guard. The subtitle is Rebels in the Deep State. 9
What the reviews say: Tim Wu, in the Times, called it engrossing and enraging. The Financial Times wrote that DOGE achieved no meaningful cuts and may even have added to the deficit, but that the effects of its eighteen-week run will be felt for years. Slate called it a roller coaster that reads like a political thriller. 9
Read it if: you liked The Fifth Risk, or you want to know what happened inside the agencies rather than what was said about them.
Skip it if: you have had enough politics for one year, or you want a plan. This is six people and one building.

The AGI Chronicles: the industry that is deciding the decade

Kind of book: Technology and industry reporting, built from more than 150 interviews with people inside OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind, plus unpublished company documents and research memos. 11
Where it sits: New at No. 11 on the combined nonfiction list, and it carries the Times dagger — the mark for titles booksellers reported selling in bulk rather than one reader at a time. It appears in neither Amazon top-20 nonfiction chart for the week of October 11, which is what a book selling mostly through shops looks like. 210
What AGI means: artificial general intelligence — a system that can outdo people at almost anything, not one narrow task.
What is inside: the rooms where researchers watch models learn to reason and write code; the White House, where officials try to regulate something that improves faster than they can understand it; the disagreements that sent the founders of Anthropic out of OpenAI; new reporting on Sam Altman being fired as chief executive and then reinstated; and the culture, from accelerationists in San Francisco hacker houses to people at safety summits who believe this technology could end the world. 11
What the reviews say: both trade reviews were starred. Kirkus called it the best single explainer of how artificial intelligence came about and what might happen next. The Times Book Review noted that Roose keeps apart the two questions readers actually have: how much damage this could do, and whether it is thinking at all. 11
Read it if: you want one volume that puts the last three years of AI news in order, especially if decisions about this technology have landed on your desk.
Skip it if: you want advice — there is no playbook here — or you have followed the industry closely and want the argument rather than the reporting.

The short version

The Witch is the only one both instruments agree on, at No. 1 everywhere. Partita and Other Worlds Than These sell better in shops than online. The AGI Chronicles sells the other way: strong with booksellers and absent from Amazon's top twenty. A bestseller is a fact about a week, not a fact about a book, which is why the fit matters more than the rank:
  • A haunted house you finish by Thursday: The Witch.
  • A 704-page homecoming you have been waiting for since you were a teenager: Other Worlds Than These.
  • A quiet novel about the life you did not live: Partita.
  • Six public servants in a building that stopped wanting them: Blockers.
  • The inside story of the industry deciding the next decade: The AGI Chronicles.
Also new this week and not covered here: in fiction, Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth and Bound and Unbound by Ali Hazelwood; in nonfiction, One Helluva Ride by Michael Douglas at No. 1, Swan Song by Charles Spencer, Devil on My Shoulder by Alice Cooper, The Rush by Nathaniel Philbrick, So Ordered by Samuel A. Alito Jr., Not Today, Fascists by Jennifer Welch, Sleeping Beauties by David Byrne and Family of Spies by Christine Kuehn. The monthly Business list has not turned over: The Let Them Theory is still No. 1 and Atomic Habits still carries a bulk-order mark at No. 2. 123

References

  1. 1
    Combined Print & E-Book Fiction — October 25, 2026

    nytimes.com

  2. 2
    Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction — October 25, 2026

    nytimes.com

  3. 3
    Business — October 1, 2026

    nytimes.com

  4. 4
    Amazon Charts, week of October 11, 2026

    amazon.com

  5. 5
    The Witch — Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press

    sourcebooks.com

  6. 6
    The Witch — Freida McFadden

    freidamcfadden.com

  7. 7
    Other Worlds Than These — Simon & Schuster, Scribner

    simonandschuster.com

  8. 8
    Partita — HarperCollins

    harpercollins.com

  9. 9
    Blockers — W. W. Norton

    wwnorton.com

  10. 10
    Amazon Charts — Most Sold Nonfiction, week of October 11, 2026

    amazon.com

  11. 11
    The AGI Chronicles — Macmillan, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    us.macmillan.com

NYT Bestseller Brief
NYT Bestseller Brief@Julia C

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