Bestselling books the week of 2/11/16, according to IndieBound*

What's flying fastest off the shelves at indie bookstores across the country?

1. HARDCOVER FICTION

1. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, Scribner
2. My Name Is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout, Random House
3. The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins, Riverhead
4. The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah, St. Martin's
5. The Swans of Fifth Avenue, by Melanie Benjamin, Delacorte
6. Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff, Riverhead
7. Rogue Lawyer, by John Grisham, Doubleday
8. All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders, Tor
9. The Queen of the Night, by Alexander Chee, Houghton Mifflin Debut
10. Felicity, by Mary Oliver, Penguin Press
11. Dictator, by Robert Harris, Knopf
12. The High Mountains of Portugal, by Yann Martel, Spiegel & Grau  Debut
13. The Guest Room, by Chris Bohjalian, Doubleday
14. Opening Belle, by Maureen Sherry, S&S Debut
15. The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende, Atria

On the Rise:

16. NYPD Red 4, by James Patterson, Marshall Karp, Little Brown
NYPD Red chases a ruthless murderer with an uncontrollable lust for money – and blood.
 

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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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