Every year or so, a debut novel from an unknown writer crashes onto the publishing scene. Buoyed by word-of-mouth recommendations among friends, passionate booksellers, and good timing, these titles give hope to aspiring authors everywhere. They help us believe that great writing can break through the wall of established brands.

While it surprises me a bit to see neither Malcolm Gladwell nor the Freakonomics guys in the top ten of the nonfiction charts we follow this week, it seems like consumers have settled into the type of books they're willing to buy on the non-fiction front.  Is the book by a prominent conservative who hates the policies of Pres. Obama?  Does the book have some sort of insight into our current financial mess?  Has the book been prominently promoted on television while promising to provide a better you?  Consider those sorts of books likely to very likely to be a bestseller, but that probably isn't terribly surprising.

Publishers have stacks of research to figure out what people like, so when the book accompanying a very popular HBO miniseries produced by Tom Hanks sells a ton of copies, no one is likely surprised.  So, in the midst of titles that are predisposed to bestsellerdom, it's the little surprises that bring me joy.  Rebecca Skloot has been a fascinating narrative journalist largely working in the field of science for sometime, so it's no surprise that her first book is well-written, but the fact that she uncovers such an interesting story - one that would likely be lost to time otherwise - is what makes The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks such a welcome addition to the bestseller list.  While it's fun to read interesting takes on seemingly tired topics sometimes, a book like Skloot is like finding buried treasure.  Read our analysis of the nonfiction charts this month on our website.

As you may or may not know, Behind the Bestsellers was a monthly feature of our e-zine, and while we haven't looked at the charts officially since November, to some extent, not much has changed.

The Help is now the publishing feel good story of this year, like it was in 2009.  The Lost Symbol is still on the charts and there's a James Patterson book there as well, along with a stack of similar detective novels.  Also, we might not ever rid ourselves of vampires.