Dear Debbie retains its place: Freida McFadden’s latest snares its second number one
Freida McFadden has retained her position atop the Official UK Top 50 for a second consecutive week with her latest thriller, Dear Debbie (Poisoned Pen Press).
Combined with the success of The Housemaid (Little, Brown) at the beginning of January, this it is the author’s fourth week at the top of the chart this year.
As Lisa Jewell’s Don’t Let Him In (Cornerstone) took the other two weeks, it means that paperback editions of psychological thrillers have topped NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM) every week of the year.
More impressive for McFadden, perhaps, is that she keeps hold of that top spot despite sales falling 42.1% compared with the previous seven days. Still, the 21,963 copies that Dear Debbie sold is still McFadden’s fourth-biggest single week to date – and far ahead of second-placed Jewell whose own sales slip 18.8% to 9,508 copies in its fourth week.
The highest new entry in the TCM is Mark Edwards’ The Wasp Trap (Penguin) debuting in seventh following its second week on sale having sold 6,175 copies, no doubt thanks to its position as Waterstones Thriller of the Month for February.
Cozy Corner from colouring collective Coco Wyo (Penguin) takes eighth place in the TCM and the crown as the biggest non-Mass-Market Fiction title in the market. Its sales have dropped 5.8% compared with the previous week to 6,110 copies, but it is enough to jump up one place to the top of the Children’s Top 20.
There is just one new release in the Hardback Non-Fiction chart, but it enters the chart in style as Learn Like a Lobster by Helen Tupper & Sarah Ellis (Penguin) pinches first place from John Gregory-Smith’s The Greatest Traybake Cookbook Ever (Michael Joseph). Tupper and Ellis’ self-help guide to succeeding at work appealed to 6,062 customers – considerably more than their previous efforts, 2020’s The Squiggly Career and 2022’s You Coach You, both of which sold just over 3,000 copies each in their debut weeks in paperback (neither were released in hardback).
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Iconic pop-culture figures are the order of the day in the Paperback Non-Fiction (PBNF) chart as Ian Leslie’s John & Paul (Faber) – a deep dive into the relationship between Lennon and McCartney – shoots up the ranking to give the musical duo yet another number one. It originally entered the PBNF Top 20 in 17th place on at launch, but following a rise of 167.7% it has sold 3,759 copies – enough to enter the overall Top 50 in 27th place.
Released at the same time as John & Paul but making its first appearance in the chart is James Patterson’s collaboration with Imogen Edward-Jones, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (Cornerstone). Having sold 1,754 copies it appears in eighth – though technically it is in joint seventh with Laurence Rees’ The Nazi Mind (Penguin) which has added an extra 48 copies to its previous week’s number.
The Original Fiction Top 20 has seen the most change this week. The previous number one, Clare Sager’s King of Ravens (Wayward TxF) drops to 20th position as its sales slump 91% to 1,156 copies. That is a hefty drop, but not as great as previous subscription box titles have seen; many usually drop out of the charts entirely in their second weeks.
Sager is replaced at the top by Jennette McCurdy’s debut fiction offering, Half His Age (4th Estate) which has seen its sales rise 38% to 3,182 copies. Second goes to Brandon Sanderson’s Isles of the Emberdark (Gollancz) – a standalone novel in the Cosmere universe – which has been snapped up by 2,791 fans in its first week on sale.
Volume has fallen this week by 3.2% to just over three million books sold, with value dropping a similar 3.1% to £29.1m. Volume has fallen 3.8% compared with the same week in 2025, with value remaining effectively flat as 2026 delivers an extra £8,110.
