Richard Osman holds off the Maases: We Solve Murders takes a fifth week at number one
Richard Osman has claimed a fifth non-consecutive number one with We Solve Murders (Viking) after enjoying a week-on-week increase in sales, according to the latest data from NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).
With 21,710 copies sold in the past seven days, Osman has boosted his sales by 17.5% compared with the previous week – this is the first time his newest book has beaten his 2024 title, The Last Devil to Die, which sold 19,385 units in the equivalent week.
That increase is enough to keep Osman at the top of the chart, just pipping Sarah J Maas to first place with the paperback edition of House of Flame and Shadow (Bloomsbury) – the third instalment in the Crescent City series – which has sold 19,293 copies, far and away Maas’ biggest single week for a paperback.
Maas is one of just two new releases in the Mass-Market Fiction Top 20, with The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Penguin) making its debut in 16th position with 6,178 copies sold following the announcement of its triumph at the Women’s Prize on Thursday coinciding with the paperback publication date. To date, the hardback edition has sold 28,423 copies, thanks in part to its inclusion on the 2024 Booker shortlist.
The second-biggest new release of the week comes from VE Schwab, whose latest offering Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil debuts in third place in the TCM Top 50 with sales of 19,112 copies, just 181 short of taking second place from Maas; 248 units were sold early prior to publication date, which would have been enough to push it up a position in the chart.
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Another big boost in the latest charts comes for Mel and Sawyer Robbins’ The Let Them Theory (Hay House UK), which re-enters the TCM Top 50 in 12th place and takes pole position in the Hardback Non-Fiction chart (HBNF) for the first time. The 138.2% increase in sales to 6,989 copies is thanks to two events at London’s Eventim Apollo on Sunday 8th June.
Big Dunc by Duncan Ferguson (Century) drops one place to second in the HBNF chart despite a 48.7% rise in sales compared with the previous seven days – but it is not the only title to benefit from a Father’s Day bump with a series of re-entries into the Top 20, including Victory ‘45 by James Holland and Al Murray (Bantam), Voices of Victory by Geraint Jones (Macmillan) and John and Paul by Ian Leslie (Faber).
It is a different story in the Paperback Non-Fiction chart where the most obvious Father’s Day gift – Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat: Home to Roost (Penguin) – only makes it to third place, despite a 67% rise in sales to 5,955 copies. Last week’s number one and two – The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (Penguin) and Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (Canongate) – retain their positions despite both seeing sales drop from the previous week.
The most obvious winner of Father’s Day football is in the Children’s Top 20 – Bluey: My Dad is Awesome (Ladybird), first published in May 2023, returns to the top of the chart for a second time with a 358.5% jump in sales. The 6,305 copies it has sold in the run up to Father’s Day 2025 is down 4.6% on the same week in 2024 when it was beaten to the top of the chart by the Taylor Swift edition (illustrated by Borghild Fallberg) of Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara’s Little People, BIG DREAMS series (Quarto).
Father’s Day footfall has brought mixed results for the total TCM, with volume rising 1.9% to 3.3 million books compared with the previous seven days – that is a drop, however, of 4.6% compared with the same week in 2024. Value has fared slightly better, rising 3.6% week-on-week but down 1.8% versus the week preceding Father’s Day last year.
