You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Dan Brown’s Origin (Corgi) has once again topped the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 20,777 copies for a fifth week atop the overall chart. In total, Brown has now spent 81 weeks in the UK number one position, beating J K Rowling (and Robert Galbraith)’s total of 80. Origin’s five-week run makes it the longest-running number one since Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients (Michael Joseph) in late summer 2017.
Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Harper) spent a 12th week in total in the runner-up spot, and with 18,790 copies sold last week, inched over the line to the 600,000 units sold mark. With more than seven months on sale under its belt—and still yet to drop below 15,000 copies sold per week—could the Costa First Novel Award winner become a million-copy-bestseller by Christmas?
It may be mid-August but the starting pistol for the festive season has officially been sounded—a new Jamie Oliver cookbook is in the charts. Jamie Cooks Italy (Michael Joseph) sold 11,728 copies to claim the Hardback Non-Fiction number one from Nadiya Hussain’s Nadiya’s Family Favourites—a staggering 159th week at the category chart pole for the celebrity chef.
Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (Arrow) rocketed back into the Top 50, courtesy of a buy-the-DVD-get-the-book-free deal at Sainsbury’s—and beating Jamie Cooks Italy to become last week's highest new enty by just 40 copies.
Claire Douglas’ Do Not Disturb (Michael Joseph) and Jonas Jonasson’s The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man (Fourth Estate) bounced into the Mass Market Fiction top 20 in their first week on sale, while both the Richard and Judy Book Club’s latest tranche and Waterstones’ fiction and thriller picks for August—Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years (Vintage) and Laura Lippman’s Sunburn (Faber)—charted in the Top 50.
Gill Sims’ Why Mummy Swears (HarperCollins) spent a fifth consecutive week atop the Original Fiction chart, the longest for any title this year—holding off strong challenges from new entries Louise Pentland’s Wilde About the Girl (Zaffre) and Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her (HC).
Mick Herron’s London Rules (John Murray) topped the Fiction Heatseekers top 20 in its first three days on sale in paperback, fewer than 500 copies outside of the Top 50. Herron’s first Jackson Lamb title Slow Horses and the fourth Spook Street both charted atop the Heatseekers list last autumn—perhaps London Rules might be the title to finally crack the chart’s upper echelons.
The print market declined marginally week on week, but its year-on-year figures stayed strong for a second week running—with a jump of 1.4% in volume and 3.2% in value compared to the same week in 2017.