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Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) has thundered into its 10th week in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, shifting 41,156 copies for £193,441. It has now surpassed 900,000 copies sold in total, as its film tie-in edition, published last month, trundles past the 150,000 copies sold milestone.
For a third week in total both editions held first and second place in the Top 50, shifting just under 75,000 copies between them. Not only has the paperback held the top spot for a 10th non-consecutive week, beating the run of Joe Wicks’ Lean in 15 (Bluebird) earlier this year and becoming the longest-running number one since Fifty Shades of Grey (Arrow), it also marks Transworld’s 160th week in the number one spot since Nielsen records began. The Girl on the Train cruises into a 21st week as the Mass Market Fiction number one—out of the last six months, it has only missed out on the MMF top spot three times.
Another Transworld film tie-in, Dan Brown’s Inferno (Corgi), blazed seven places up the chart to strike third place. It sold a searing 17,291 copies, beating back Bernard Cornwell’s The Flame Bearer (HarperColllins), which held fourth for a second week running. Despite a challenge from yet another film tie-in, Bridget Jones’ Baby (Picador)—five charted in the Top 50 last week—The Flame Bearer also held the Original Fiction number one for Cornwell’s 14th week in total.
Liz Pichon’s DogZombies Rule (For Now) (Scholastic), her 11th Tom Gates novel, escalated up the charts to swipe the Children’s number one from the Jim Kay-illustrated Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Bloomsbury). Appropriately, this is the author's 11th week atop the kid's top 20. This is also the first time since July that the Children’s number one hasn’t been held by a Harry Potter title.
DogZombies Rule sold 11,594 copies to jump 17 places up the Top 50, leapfrogging Tom Fletcher & Shane Devries’ The Christmasaurus (Puffin), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Little, Brown) and Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk).
Jamie Vardy’s From Nowhere, My Story (Ebury) hurdled into the Top 50 last week, climbing to 38th overall and fourth in the Hardback Non-Fiction chart. Helen Rappoport’s The Victoria Letters (HarperCollins) made a similar rise, to 39th—both titles, following the lives of the two (very different) national figures, shifting within 50 copies of one another.
Though last week's total market value was slightly down year on year, by 2.4%, it was up against 2015's Super Thursday week—which is still to come this year, on 20th October. For year to date value, the market has already long surpassed the £1bn mark and is currently up by over £100m on 2015's value at the same point in October.