The Summer Best-Sellers of the '90s: The Law Firm of Grisham, Clancy, Cornwall, and Steele

Plus: It's over for Jodie and Pacey, and all happening for The Golden Bachelor

Summer may be done and dusted, but it’s still beach season in our hearts, and possibly our bookshelves. Today, journey with me back in time to an era I very vividly remember, as I was a young adult at the time; a flannel-clad decade, the heyday of grunge, those halcyon days of dial-up internet only… Yes, the 1990s, and more specifically, its summer bestsellers. (In case you missed it, we looked at the 1980s here, and the 1970s here.)

As a reminder, methodologically speaking, I consider “summer” to be roughly the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day — a.k.a, “American Summer Observed.” Also as always, my source for our book-related data is Wikipedia, which has collated the New York Times number one best-sellers for every week of every year from 1931 to the present. Please cue up Stone Temple Pilots, put on your bodysuit, and light up a clove cigarette as we dive into the past and see what GenX (and everyone else) was dragging to the beach with them that decade.

Spoiler: It’s the g…