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Patricia Cornwell has topped the overall chart for the second consecutive week. Her Book of the Dead (Little, Brown) sold 49,855 copies during the seven days to 26th April, its first full week on sale. According to BookScan data, one in every 72 books bought last week was a copy of Book of the Dead, and the title outsold its nearest rival, Joanne Harris's Lollipop Shoes (Black Swan), by almost two copies to one.
Lollipop Shoes, thanks to half-price book of the week spots in Borders, Waterstone's and W H Smith, as well as at Amazon.co.uk, rocketed into second position from 22nd place the previous week, in a strong week for mass market female authors. Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes (Hodder), Penny Vincenzi's An Absolute Scandal (Headline Review) and Tasmina Perry's Gold Diggers (Harper) all made the Top Ten.
Within Original Fiction, Marian Keyes' The Charming Man (Michael Joseph) narrowly failed to oust Cecelia Ahern's Thanks for the Memories (HarperCollins) from number one.
At £26.4m, revenue through the Total Consumer Market fell by 6.2% week-on-week, but remained 2.3% up year-on-year. At 3.6m, volume sales through the market hit a 12-month low, in what is traditionally the slowest point in the bookselling calendar in sales terms.