Harper Lee and Ta-Nehisi Coates Debut on the Indie Bestseller List

By Maryann Yin 

A1rBZedGc0LWe’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending July 12, 2015–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #1 in Hardcover Fiction) Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee: “Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch—Scout—struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her. Exploring how the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird are adjusting to the turbulent events transforming mid-1950s America, Go Set a Watchman casts a fascinating new light on Harper Lee’s enduring classic.” (July 2015)

(Debuted at #10 in Hardcover Fiction) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: “A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic novel—a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man’s struggle for justice—but the weight of history will only tolerate so much.” (July 1960)

(Debuted at #2 in Hardcover Nonfiction) Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Americans have built an empire on the idea of ‘race,’ a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?” (July 2015)