Atomic Books Blog

People come into the shop all the time and ask, "Where's your romance section?" We repress the urge to ask, "What kind of bookstore are you mistaking us for?" Instead, we say, "Sorry, we don't have a romance section." So as a compromise, or perhaps just to further confuse things, we decided our 2025 theme would be our take: Bad Love. OUR 2025 BAD LOVE READING LIST January - So Late In The Day - Claire Keegan February - Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath March - Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder Libro.fm AudioBook April - Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer Libro.fm AudioBook May - This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar / Max Gladstone Libro.fm AudioBook June - Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon Libro.fm AudioBook July - Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier Libro.fm AudioBook August - Crash by J.G. Ballard Libro.fm AudioBook September - The Price Of Salt by Patricia Highsmith Libro.fm AudioBook October - ...

These titles are the top 25 original graphic novels/self-contained trade paperback best sellers at Atomic Books in 2023. 1. Ducks: Two Years In The Oil Sands by Kate Beaton 2. Penny by Karl Stevens 3. Monica by Daniel Clowes 4. It's Lonely At The Centre Of The Earth by Zoe Thorogood 5. Complete Eightball: Issues 1 - 18 by Daniel Clowes 6. Birds of Maine by Michael DeForge 7. A Guest In The House by Emily Carroll 8. Black Hole by Charles Burns 9. Cosmic Detective by Jeff Lemire / Matt Kindt / David Rubin 10. Night Fever by Ed Brubaker / Sean Phillips / Jacob Phillips 11. The Mysteries by Bill Watterson / John Kascht 12. The Tick: The Complete Edlund by Ben Edlund 13. A People's History Of American Empire by Howard Zinn / Paul Buhle / Mike Konopacki 14. Girl Juice by Benji Nate 15. Billionaires: Lives Of The Rich And Powerful by Darryl Cunningham 16. The Watchmen by Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons 17. A Christmas Beastiary by John Kenn Mortensen / Benni Bødker 18. Werew...

 These titles are the top 30 fiction and poetry best sellers at Atomic Books in 2023. 1. Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance: A Novel by John Waters 2. The Eyes & The Impossible by Dave Eggers 3. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel by Olga Tokarczuk 4. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin 5. Holding Pattern by Jennie Xie 6. Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica 7. Dune by Frank Herbert 8. Swamplandia by Karen Russell 9. Loner Forensics: Poems by Thea Brown 10. Sleeping Giants by Sylvian Neuvel 11. Only Good Indians: A Novel by Stephen Graham Jones 12. Charm City Rocks: A Love Story by Matthew Norman 13. Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin 14. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy 15. McSweeney's #71: The Monstrous and the Terrible by various 16. Yellowface: A Novel by R. F. Kuang 17. After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different by Adam Gnade 18. Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy 19. The Passenger b...

These titles are the top 30 non-fiction best sellers at Atomic Books in 2023. 1. John Water: Pope Of Trash by John Waters 2. Festive Maryland Recipes by Kara Mae Harris 3. Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner 4. Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz 5. Role Models by John Waters 6. The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin 7. The League of Lady Poisoners: Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women by Lisa Perrin 8. Desert Oracle: Volume 1: Strange True Tales from the American Southwest by Ken Layne 9. Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America by John Waters 10. Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder by John Waters 11. You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult by Lane Moore 12. Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste by John Waters 13. Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris 14. Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm by Dan Charnas 15. All About Love: New Vi...

  We thought 2024 might be an appropriate year to explore the way things end. Careers, relationships, our emotional state, the world. All things end. Maybe even American democracy. But on the bright side, often the end of one thing is the beginning of something new. We're not sure how we'll be feeling by this time in 2025, so let's get ahead of things and look at The End. OUR 2024 THE END READING LIST January - Monica by Daniel Clowes February - The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa March - Tender Is The Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica April - My Year Of Rest And Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh May - Out by Natsuo Kirino June - This Is The End Of Something But It's Not The End Of You by Adam Gnade July - Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin August - The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert September - Slow Horses by Mick Herron October - Toad by Katherine Dunn November - Human Target (complete, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2) by Tom King / Greg Smallwood December ...

Prior to Diamond Comics Distributors shedding publishers (or losing their exclusive arrangements with select publishers), one perk for comic book stores was that a number of publishers offered their trades and graphic novels to the direct market weeks, sometimes a whole month, before the book market. And since everyone who sells books competes with Amazon, this perk could be immensely helpful in competing against a giant corporate online retailer who has a history of aggressive and industry-destroying pricing.  Something we've noticed that no one in the comics press (or anywhere else as far as we can tell) seems to be talking about is the loss of that exclusive sales window for the direct market as publishers scurry to bookstore distributors for graphic novel and trade collection distribution. But it seems to have been disappearing with publisher after publisher - first DC, then Marvel, and now others like Image and Dark Horse. For comics shops this adds confusion when trying to an...