Grafton, Penny burn up Paste BN's list

Here’s a look at what’s new on Paste BN’s Best-Selling Books list…

Leading ladies: It’s a big week for two popular female mystery writers whose latest books were released on Aug. 25. Sue Grafton lands at No. 1 with X (Marian Wood/Putnam), while Louise Penny hits No. 5 with The Nature of the Beast (Minotaur). (The full list will publish on Thursday.)

X is Grafton’s fourth No. 1 debut; W Is for Wasted, her last mystery starring P.I.  Kinsey Millhone, also landed in the top spot, on Sept. 19, 2013.

X is the first in Grafton’s long-running Alphabet mystery series to break the title pattern of a letter followed by “Is for” and a word.

"I first thought of using 'X is for Xenophobe' or Xenophobia, which suggests a fear of foreigners, but alas, not one single foreigner materialized in the course of the writing," Grafton says. "There's a box of files with an X on the lid, a Father Xavier, a married couple whose last name is Xanakis, and a missing painting of a xebec which is a three-masted sailing vessel, but none of these seemed to encompass the whole. Finally, it occurred to me that since I was the one who invented this 'rule' about '…is for…' I was surely entitled to break it."

The 25th book in the series, which will start with the letter “Y,” is likely to be published in fall 2017, says her publisher.

Penny’s debut this week matches her previous high on the list. The Long Way Home, the last book in her Canada-set series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, also landed at No. 5, on Sept. 4, 2014.