Bestselling books the week of 7/18/13, according to IndieBound*

What's selling best at independent bookstores across America

1. HARDCOVER FICTION

1. And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini, Riverhead
2. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman, Morrow
3. Inferno, by Dan Brown, Doubleday
4. Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen, Knopf
5. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, Crown
6. The Silver Star, by Jeannette Walls, Scribner
7. TransAtlantic, by Colum McCann, Random House
8. The Son, by Philipp Meyer, Ecco
9. Sisterland, by Curtis Sittenfeld, Random House
10. Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson, Reagan Arthur Books
11. The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, by Anton DiSclafani, Riverhead
12. The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer, Riverhead
13. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, Bantam
14. The Light in the Ruins- Debut, by Chris Bohjalian, Doubleday
15. Hidden Order- Debut, by Brad Thor, Atria
On the Rise:
19. The Illusion of Separateness, by Simon Van Booy, Harper
Van Booy's harrowing and enchanting story of how one man's act of mercy during World War II changed the lives of strangers is a July 2013 Indie Next List Great Read.

*Published Thursday, July 18, 2013 (for the sales week ended Sunday, July 14, 2013). Based on reporting from many hundreds of independent bookstores across the United States. For information on more titles, please visit IndieBound.org

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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