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Into the Water (Doubleday) has cannonballed into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, displacing Transworld stablemate Lee Child’s Night School (Bantam). Paula Hawkins’ follow-up to her million-copy-bestseller The Girl on the Train surged up the chart, shifting 31,905 copies for £322,199. This was the largest single-week haul for an Original Fiction title since Night School’s hardback edition was published in November 2016, and 1,828 copies more than The Girl on the Train’s biggest-selling week in hardback.
For Hawkins, a rising tide lifts all boats. Into the Water’s unstoppable predecessor also benefitted from a swell, with the original paperback returning to the Top 50 in 31st place, with 4,292 copies sold, and the film tie-in edition sneaking in at 46th place.
It was a Transworld top three with Shari Lapena’s The Couple Next Door (Corgi), which sold an extra 500 copies week on week to leapfrog Night School and claim second place. Lapena’s debut is the only one of the latest Richard and Judy tranche to increase in volume every week since its release. It also took the Mass Market Fiction number one, ending Child’s four-week reign.
Sarah J Maas’ A Court of Wings and Ruin (Bloomsbury Children's) thundered to the top of the Children’s chart, swooping into ninth place overall, with 10,831 copies sold. Maas becomes the first non-British Children’s Fiction & YA number one since Jeff Kinney with Old School (Puffin), all the way back in January 2016.
Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (Particular) held the Hardback Non-Fiction number one, with Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens (returning to the Paperback Non-Fiction top spot for a fourth non-consecutive week). The highest non-fiction new entry was Yanis Varoufakis’ Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment (The Bodley Head), which shifted 4,653 copies—beating his previous title, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, published mid-EU referendum campaign.
The print market soared 3.4% week on week to £24.8m. Year on year, value rose 9.8%, with volume up 5.8%.