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Sophie Kinsella's Twenties Girl (Black Swan) has retained its number one crown once again, clocking up a third week at the summit of the Official UK Top 50. It sold 29,187 copies at UK book retailers, in a strong week for the book market following a poor January.
According to Nielsen BookScan data, £28.6m was spent at UK book retailers last week, up 1.1% week on week, and up 4.2% on the same week last year—when Stephenie Meyer's New Moon (Atom) topped the chart with a 23,365 seven-day sale. It is the first week since the new year that sales have shown a year-on-year increase.
It comes after a snow-affected dire January for the trade. BookScan data showed sales through the four weeks to 30th January were down 7.4% year on year to £107.8m, the worst year-on-year decline since July 2008, when the market was affected by the hardback release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the previous year.
Alexander McCall Smith's 10th No.1 Ladies Detective Agency novel, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (Abacus), take second position this week with a 21,420 weekly sale, while the film tie-in edition of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (Picador) sits third.
Following his death last month, J D Salinger's The Cather in the Rye has joined the Official UK Top 50 for the first time since a BBC "Big Read"-boosted 2003. Penguin's 1994 edition sold 4,825 copies last week, strong enough for 40th position overall, and has now sold more than 630,000 copies since BookScan records began in January 1998.
Despite a 13.4% drop in sales week-on-week, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (Bantam Press) has returned to the top of the Original Fiction chart after a two-week hiatus. Its week-on-week decline was much shallower than that suffered by last week's number one, James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge's Worst Case (Century), whose sales fell a 41.3% week-on-week. TV Book Club pick Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts (Virago) enjoyed a 18.4% week-on-week sales boost, moving it to 14th position overall.