First Class: Virginia Evans hits a Women’s Prize for Fiction high note
Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent (Penguin) received a further boost in its initial full week of sales following its coronation at the Women’s Prize for Fiction ceremony, becoming the first title in the award’s history to grab the UK overall number one in the wake of its win.
Evans’ debut hit 15,494 copies through NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM), 4.4% up from the previous week, which pushed it up two notches to first place in the Official UK Top 50. Evans is the second Women’s Prize winner to grab the overall top spot, following Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (Tinder Press), which scaled the summit with the launch of its paperback in April 2021, 10 months after winning the award.
However, Evans’ triumph in the charts is partly down to significant week-on-week sales contractions for previous number ones. The Divorce by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press) has separated from more than a quarter of its readers, though still matched with enough to sell 14,351 copies, giving it second place in both the UK Top 50 and the Mass-Market Fiction (MMF) Top 20. Just behind McFadden is Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune (Penguin), which with 13,909 copies sold in the latest set of data is down 11.8%.
The top new release of the week is The Assassin’s Way by JM Kearl (Wayward TxF) – the latest book to be featured in FairyLoot’s Romantasy subscription box sold 12,810 copies, enough to give it prime position in the Original Fiction (OF) Top 20.
Perhaps in anticipation of the returning hot weather – and in time for Father’s Day – Jamie Oliver’s BBQ (Michael Joseph) returned to the summit of the Hardback Non-Fiction (HBNF) chart following an 86.2% increase to a sizzling 6,958 copies this week. It is the sixth stint atop HBNF for BBQ, with sales now at 51,207 copies, just 1,084 units behind Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling (Picador) the book it has replaced at number one.
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Re-entering the HBNF chart is Lyse Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul (Hutchinson Heinemann) – the winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction – with a week-on-week bound of 215.6% to 1,449 copies putting it in eighth place in the rankings. It has seen a somewhat slower boost than The Correspondent, possibly because stock of the title originally published in September 2025 was not in abundance, but also due to its £25 RRP.
New releases in the HBNF chart are a little rare this week, though there are a few May publications which make it into the chart for the first time, including Inside Red Bull Racing by Matt Majendie (Blink) and SAS 101 by Titch Cormack (Michael Joseph), plus 2025’s Dad Jokes (Hamlyn), in all likelihood thanks to the run-up to Father’s Day.
Another author to benefit from Father’s Day footfall is Jeremy Clarkson, whose latest Diddly Squat paperback, The Farmer’s Dog (Penguin), had sales climb 69.2% to 5,574 units, moving up a place to the top of the Paperback Non-Fiction (PBNF) chart. Map Men’s This Way Up (Mudlark) is knocked off the number one to second, but it has also benefited from increased exposure with sales finding their way to a 14.8% increase.
In the Children’s chart, Sticker Dolly Dressing K-Pop by Lesley Sims and Sandrine Lamour (Usborne) returns to the top spot for an impressive sixth time in seven weeks after being displaced in the previous period by Lynette Noni’s Shadow Reaper (Penguin), despite the sticker title’s sales falling 10.3% to 6,379 copies. Children’s is also not immune to the Father’s Day surge with four entries about dads making a mark – led by a re-entry for Bluey: My Dad Is Awesome (Ladybird), which jumped a mighty 339.7% compared with the previous seven days.
Father’s Day footfall combined with Indie Bookshop Week has seen sales climb 2% this week to 3.2 million books through the nation’s tills, notching up £31.5m, up 2.6%. Compared with last year – when much of the UK was experiencing a heat wave – volume sales are 14% up with value rising 16.6%.
