Hart of Gold: Callie Hart’s fired-up Brimstone grabs the top spot
With sales nearly twice as much as its nearest rival, Callie Hart’s Brimstone (Hodderscape) has debuted in first place in the Official UK Top 50, according to the latest data from NielsenIQ BookData’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).
The second book in the Fae & Alchemy series has sold 43,024 copies in its first few days on sale – that is an increase of 225.6%, compared to the launch week of its predecessor, Quicksilver, which sold 13,215 copies at the beginning of December 2024.
The original hardback edition of Quicksilver has gone on to sell 77,013 copies since then, with another 25,857 units via a special edition that was released in August of this year. That means in the first week just under half of the series readers have already come back for the sequel – a strong retention rate, but it means it is unlikely to sustain this volume through December.
That is not a problem that faces this week’s second bestselling title – the 2026 edition of Guinness World Records has seen its sales jump 93.6% as the temperature dropping by roughly the same amount seems to have reminded customers that Christmas is coming.
That increase for Guinness means it jumps from third place to first in the Hardback Non-Fiction (HBNF) Top 20, pushing Charlie Mackesy’s Always Remember (Ebury Press) down to second, despite the latter only selling one fewer copy than the previous week. Mackesy sits just under 10,000 copies ahead of Mary Berry’s Mary 90 (BBC Books) which has seen its sales rise 39.6% to 12,988 copies – making it the third bestselling book in the HBNF Top 20 and pushing it into the TCM Top 10.
The previous TCM number one, Big Jim Believes by Dav Pilkey (Scholastic) has predictably seen its sales drop in its second week on sale. It falls to sixth place in the TCM with 14,766 copies sold, a decline of 48.9%. That contraction for Pilkey means there is a vacancy at the top of the Children’s Top 20 – one that is gladly filled by Partypooper (Puffin), the 20th instalment in Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Its sales have jumped 18.5% to 18,369 copies, giving it its fourth non-consecutive week in the kids’ top spot – and Kinney’s 104th week, overall.
Kinney remains in fourth place in the TCM as Pilkey drops to sixth, meaning Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune (Viking) has space to move back up one position into the Top 5. The fifth in the Thursday Murder Club series has seen its sales climb 20.9% this week, but it continues to stall in second place in the Original Fiction (OF) Top 20 with Brimstone blocking its attempt to reclaim the top spot.
While Lee and Andrew Child’s latest Jack Reacher novel, Exit Strategy, falls from the top spot in the OF Top 20, it is not all bad news for the action hero. The 10th Reacher title, The Hard Way (Bantam) originally published in paperback in 2011 has re-entered the Mass-Market Fiction (MMF) chart in pole position with 7,712 copies sold in the most recent seven-day period – no doubt helped by a £3 deal at The Works, though with an average selling price of £5.40, it is not completely down to that offer.
The Paperback Non-Fiction chart remains the most static of all the charts with no change to the Top 4 – led by The 1% Club: Official Quiz Book Volume 2 (Bantam) which experiences an 8.8% rise to 9,685 copies, more than twice as many as the first volume managed in the same week in 2024.
With sales in the Top 50 rising 20% for the second consecutive week, the overall TCM this week has seen volume rise 8.8% to 4.5 million books sold with value coming in at £43.5m, up 9.9%. Compared with the equivalent seven days in 2024, volume has increased a slight 0.1% with value 0.4%.
