by Lília
We had a hot August: in temperature and bestsellers!
There were many repeats of previous months, but quite a few new titles popping up as well. And not surprising at all: the trading cards still ride the wave of the bestsellers. (You can contact our stores for a real-time stock check.)
Not surprisingly, the greatest bestseller was A Dictionary of Color Combinations. After the warehouse fire that cramped their style, they are back in stock with full force and still going strong!
It’s still Greek mythology times with Stephen Fry’s Mythos and Odyssey and Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Odyssey charting high on our list. And murder mystery puzzles: Murdle and Murdoku were bestsellers in July too, but this month Murdoku Volume 2 has joined their ranks and reached bestseller status.
Taiwan Travelogue is also on the list, and besides being the winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize, it was also the winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature. According to R.F. Kuang on her new book Taipei Story – being released on September 8th – if you’d like to know more about Taiwan’s history, you should read Taiwan Travelogue.
The most expected – and finally here – has been Regime Change. We all know why…
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
As the day dawns on the 50th annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes. Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves. When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight… and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.
Finally out in paperback. Prepare yourself for the film!
Mythos by Stephen Fry
No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly or brilliantly as Greek gods and goddesses. In Stephen Fry’s vivid retelling, we gaze in wonder as wise Athena is born from the cracking open of the great head of Zeus and follow doomed Persephone into the dark and lonely realm of the Underworld. We shiver when Pandora opens her jar of evil torments and watch with joy as the legendary love affair between Eros and Psyche unfolds.
Staff Choice: Renata and Martijn
Odyssey by Stephen Fry
Wily Odysseus, King of Ithaca, has won Troy for the Greeks—after a decade of brutal, bloody warfare. But now this warrior remembers he is a husband and father—and his gaze turns longingly towards home. Setting sail with a small fleet, Odysseus dreams of soon lying in the arms of his beloved wife Penelope, and of teaching his son Telemachus the ways of a warrior. However, the gods laugh at the foolish hopes of mortals. And, angered by this upstart, Poseidon – God of the ocean realms – curses our hero to wander the seas for ten long years.
Staff Choice: Bella
Murdoku Volume 2 by Manuel Garand
A truly innovative puzzle that incorporates murder mysteries, environmental storytelling, sudoku-like logic… and now, time travel! Place the suspects, reveal the killer! These visually appealing, addictive puzzles drop solvers into immersive mini murder mysteries, combining features of classic Japanese-style logic puzzles like sudoku with the storytelling of classic grid logic problems. Each Murdoku grid is its own unique crime scene in which every detail is important: rooms, furniture, plants, animals, and most importantly, the suspects.
If you like more puzzle mysteries, our Naomi just wrote a great post about them.
Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
From the two reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this definitive portrait of Donald Trump in the White House. Regime Change covers the first year of Trump’s second presidency—a term liberated from every constraint that defined his first. The generals who once told him “no” are gone, and the lawyers who remain have learned to pick their battles. His administration has flouted court orders and he has claimed powers that Congress once checked. What remains is a President willing to take enormous risks that have upended global markets and toppled heads of state; an imperial President operating almost entirely on instinct alone.
Vagabond Volume 1 by Takehiko Inoue
Shinmen Takezo is destined to become the legendary sword-saint, Miyamoto Musashi—perhaps the most renowned samurai of all time. For now, Takezo is a cold-hearted killer, who will take on anyone in mortal combat to make a name for himself. This is the journey of a wild young brute who strives to reach enlightenment by way of the sword—fighting on the edge of death.
Staff Choice: Yannis
The Summer Hikaru Died, Vol. 1 by Mokumokuren
Two boys lived in a village: Yoshiki and Hikaru. The two did everything together… until the day Hikaru was encompassed by a mysterious light. That was when everything changed—Hikaru most of all. Yoshiki still wishes from the bottom of his heart to always stay by his side… but is there even a Hikaru left to be with?
Featured in Staff Top 5s 2025.
Pokécology by Pikachu Press
This book and its vivid illustrations introduce you to the ecologies of Pokémon based on data from the Pokédex. Pokécology: An Illustrated Guide to Pokémon Ecology focuses on the similarities, differences, generalities, and relationships between Pokémon ecologies. The results of those observations and analyses are presented alongside spectacular artwork. The author and illustrator – both of whom hold doctorate degrees and have studied animal behavior and ecology – explain “Pokécology” from a brand-new perspective.
There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.
A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines 3 outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers – the Tigris and the Thames – transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”
A Dictionary of Color Combinations by Sanzo Wada
This book is a collection of 348 color combinations originated by Sanzo Wada (1883-1967) who, in that time of increasingly avant-garde and diversified use of color, was quick to focus on the importance of color and laid the foundation for contemporary color research. The original 6-volume work Haishoku Soukan, from which this booklet is derived, was published from 1933 to 1934. The work was compiled in early Showa, which was a turbulent pre-war and post-war period. But it was also a period permeated with a new atmosphere brought on by the influence of western culture.
Staff Choice: Tiemen
Stoner by John Williams
William Stoner is born at the end of the 19th century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a ‘proper’ family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.
Staff Choice: Bob and Sigrid; book review: Damla.
Taiwan Travelogue by Shuang-Zi Yang
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear. Soon a Taiwanese woman – who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name – is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook.
