TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of January 22, 1934

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
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1
THE THIN MAN
Dashiell Hammett
Cover of THE THIN MAN

THE THIN MAN

by Dashiell Hammett · Knopf

3 wks at #1 · 2 on list

Nick and Nora, husband and wife, become involved in a mystery surrounding the disappearance of a wealthy, eccentric inventer who is the prime suspect in a brutal New York City murder case.

3
NEW
THE MOTHER
Pearl S. Buck
Cover of THE MOTHER
4
1
MEN AGAINST THE SEA
Charles Nordhoff and James N. Hall

MEN AGAINST THE SEA

by Charles Nordhoff and James N. Hall · Little, Brown

2 wks on list

James Norman Hall (1887-1951) was an American author best known for the novel Mutiny on the Bounty with co-author Charles Bernard Nordhoff (1887-1947) an English-born American novelist and traveler. Mutiny on the Bounty is the title of the 1932 novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, based on the mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh, commanding officer of the Bounty in 1789. It has been made into several films and a musical. It was the first of what became "The Bounty Trilogy," which continues with Men Against the Sea, and concludes with Pitcairn's Island.

5
NEW
SEA LEVEL
Anne Parrish

SEA LEVEL

by Anne Parrish · Harper

1 wks on list
6
NEW
SKIN AND BONES
Thorne Smith
Cover of SKIN AND BONES

SKIN AND BONES

by Thorne Smith · Doubleday, Doran

1 wks on list

Thorne Smith's imaginative novel Skin and Bones takes the concept of suffering for one's art to a whole new level. While developing film, a photographer accidentally creates a chemical concoction that produces an exceedingly bizarre phenomenon -- he spontaneously begins to switch back and forth between a normal human appearance and that of a walking skeleton. Can he make a life worth living with this condition?

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.