You ever want to know what people are buying in bookstores? Well, it so happens that I work at one!

During the last week of February, I pondered about what type of post to make for “Books in Hand.” At first, I planned to discuss all the books customers came in asking for or buying, but that’s a bit too much because everybody came in asking for different books, and I didn’t remember all of them. My boss showed me a way to check our store’s best selling books, and I found out what we sold a lot of!

And that’s what this post is—seeing the top ten selling books of April. Let’s take a look.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline | Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter | The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho | Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi | Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr | Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult |
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer | Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders |
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle | The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein |
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli |
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi | The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Dog Man and Cat Kid by Dav Pilkey | A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss & John Oliver |
Black Panther: The Young Prince by Ronald L. Smith | I Am Enough by Grace Byers |
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli

Kristy’s Great Idea (The Babysitter’s Club #1) by Raina Telgemeier |
Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman by Dav Pilkey |
Awkward by Svetlana Chmakova | Marvel’s Black Panther: On the Prowl!  |
The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

A Higher Loyalty by James Comey | The Subtle Art of Not Give A F*ck by Mark Manson |
Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA by Luis J. Rodriguez | The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Miguel Ruiz | Killing the Deep State by Jerome R. Corsi 

You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero | 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson |
The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish | Michelle Obama: A Photographic Journey |
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

Obama: An Intimate Portrait by Pete Souza | Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover |
I’ve Been Thinking… by Maria Shriver | Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman |
Born A Crime by Trevor Noah

NOTES:

• Every bookstore’s top-selling books will be different from each other. This list is just for my store.
• I decided to have a top 15 for Kids + Teens and nonfiction books because we sold a lot of those books in March than we did general fiction books.
• It’s so fascinating to see what books continued to be in to the top 10-15 list and what rank they’re in.
  • I’m pleased Homegoing and Pachinko are our top sellers because any time somebody asks for Pachinko, I recommend Homegoing because they’re both family sagas.
  • I love that we’ve been selling a lot of The Prince and the Dressmaker. The cutest graphic novel ever.
  • When Michelle McNamara’s book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark came out, my bookstore didn’t sell a lot, which was strange considering this is about a serial killer based in California. Of course when the killer was caught(!!!!!), we sold out all of our copies. Super crazy.
  • Everybody wanted A Higher Loyalty, and thankfully, we stocked up (I’m sure we learned from Fire and Fury, but that book came out suddenly because of the threat of a lawsuit.)
• These books seem to be forever on the top-selling list: The Alchemist, anything Dog Man or Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, You Are A Badass, The Four Agreements, the 5 Love Languages, and Milk and Honey. (Don’t be surprise if you see these books in May. People love these books.)
• I omitted the poetry list because it didn’t change from February, so it was The Sun and Her Flowers, Pillow Thoughts, Milk and Honey, and 2Fish.

Were there any surprises? What did you think would be a top-selling book? What books from this list have you read?