Book Buzz: Dueling 'Mockingbirds' duke it out on list

Apparently there's nothing like a good old-fashioned author smackdown to propel book sales.

Last week famously reclusive author Harper Lee, 88, made headlines disavowing Marja Mills' new biography, The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee. Mills' book lands at No. 35 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, nestled, ironically, just two spots behind Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, at No. 33.

Lee's 54-year-old Southern classic was issued on July 8 as an e-book for the first time, but based on outlets reporting to USA TODAY's list, the paperback version outsold all others this past week.

Mills got to know Lee and her older sister Alice in 2001 as a journalist for The Chicago Tribune. In 2004, with the sisters' blessing (according to the author), Mills moved in to the house next door in Monroeville, Ala.

But in her letter dated July 14, Harper Lee said: "Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood."

In defending her book, Mills cited a letter she has from Alice Lee saying the sisters cooperated with Mills. The Penguin Press is also standing behind the book.

In a 3½-star (out of four) review for USA TODAY, Charles Finch called The Mockingbird Next Door a "thoughtful, sweet-tempered, witty piece of work." He also noted that "Mills wrote her story with the approval of both sisters, and it sometimes reads more like a friend's account than a reporter's, which may be why it doesn't pry too insistently into Lee's secrets."

To Kill a Mockingbird has spent 848 weeks on USA TODAY's list, which began in October 1993. Its highest ranking was No. 10 in 2010, during its 50th-anniversary year.

The book tells the story of Atticus Finch and his defense of a black man wrongly accused of rape in the Jim Crow South.