The holiday season has been good to Mormon authors.
Five fiction writers who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are currently on the New York Times' best-seller hardcover fiction list.
Radio host Glenn Beck wrote "The Christmas Sweater," which debuted on the list at No. 1 and fell one spot to No. 2 for its second and third weeks. Beck, who was in Salt Lake City last weekend promoting the novel, co-wrote the book with Kevin Balfe and fellow Mormon Jason Wright.
Stephenie Meyer's adult fiction book "The Host" is currently at No. 10 and has been on the list for 29 weeks. Orson Scott Card's "Ender in Exile" is at No. 21, and Richard Paul Evans' "Grace" is at No. 35.
"I think it's a good time to be an LDS writer. … I would guess that there has not been a time with so many (on the list)," said Wright, whose book "The Wednesday Letters" made it to No. 6 on the list in 2007. "This is kind of an unusual thing."
Meyer is no stranger to the New York Times' lists. She has spent months upon months on the best-seller list for children's chapter books with her "Twilight" series.
Mark Clegg, vice president of retail at Deseret Book, said the presence of multiple members of the LDS Church on the list is significant.
"It does seem at the present moment that there has been a coming together almost, where a number of members of the church, for whatever reason, just in the last six to eight months, have been finding tremendous success in both the national as well as in the LDS markets," he said.
Clegg said all four of the titles are sold at Deseret Book, though none is LDS-themed. This allows the books to appeal to an international audience, though church members might read into them differently knowing that they share a faith with the author.
"People that know Glenn Beck could make some assumptions, in terms of the way he communicates in the book, but if you didn't know that (he was Mormon), you wouldn't have any idea," Clegg said. "You would just simply know that this is a wonderful story about compassion and charity and Christmas spirit. I'm not even sure that you'd make the connection, necessarily."
Beck's holiday novel is about a boy who learns life lessons the hard way when his mother makes him a sweater for Christmas instead of giving him the bike he wanted. Meyer's "The Host" is about aliens who overtake the bodies of people on Earth. Card's science fiction novel is a continuation of his award-winning Ender series. And Evans' "Grace" tells the story of a retrospective man recalling his relationship with a childhood friend, Grace, who had an abusive stepfather.
When asked whether he and his co-authors had expected "The Christmas Sweater" to do so well, Wright said they were cautiously optimistic.
"Glenn and his staff, I think they were trying to lower the expectations a little bit because it's a really tough time of year, and the economy, obviously, is kind of killing folks, and fiction is not selling nearly as well this year as it has in years past. ...(So) landing at No. 1 was certainly a big thrill for everybody."
Wright said Beck was particularly happy that "The Christmas Sweater" beat out Stephen King's book "Just After Sunset," which debuted at No. 2 on the list the same day as Beck's debut. King called Beck "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother" in a 2007 Entertainment Weekly magazine article he wrote about the variety of programming on cable television.
The Times' list usually doesn't reflect other lists in the industry, and the criteria used by the paper to determine what titles make it is kept hush-hush, Wright said. And yet more than any other, the New York Times list has huge sway.
"The longer I'm in the industry, the more I learn that it has incredible power," "The Wednesday Letters" has been sold internationally and translated into different languages, while his more recent publication, "Recovering Charles," hasn't made the list and hasn't received as much international attention.
"Most authors will tell you that they don't pay much attention to it, that it's not terribly important," Wright said. "And they're all lying. … Most authors I know would trade off being on five of the other lists just to be on the New York Times list."
Clegg said all of the titles have been selling well at Deseret Book, but he attributed it only in small part to the authors sharing a religion with the retail store's target audience.
"Ultimately the author has to write a book that people will enjoy, that will resonate, that will make a difference in people's lives," he said. "And to the degree that the book does that and they happen to be LDS … perhaps those two could work together to add some exponential sales to the book. But ultimately, I think the book has to carry its weight regardless of whether the person is LDS or not."
E-mail: mfarmer@desnews.com