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Lee and Andrew Child's Better Off Dead (Bantam) has stormed straight into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 44,941 copies in its first week on sale.
This is the third year in a row the new Jack Reacher hardback has hit the overall top spot, following on from the brothers Child's first collaboration The Sentinel in 2020, and Child's last solo Reacher, Blue Moon, in 2019.
Better Off Dead also scores Child's 52nd week in the Original Fiction number one, as the new Jack Reacher title ended the run of Richard Osman's The Man Who Died Twice (Viking) at the top.
Jeff Kinney's Big Shot (Puffin) was the second-highest new entry in the Top 50, topping the Children's chart with 37,218 copies sold. This was Kinney's 77th week in the category chart top spot, with spin-off series Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Spooky Stories notching up a top spot in April.
Daisy May Cooper's Don't Laugh, It'll Only Encourage Her (Michael Joseph) knocked Billy Connolly's Windswept & Interesting (Two Roads) from the top of the Hardback Non-Fiction chart. The "This Country" star's memoir sold 26,026 copies in its first week on sale.
Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (Viking) re-claimed the Mass Market Fiction number one from Peter James' Left You Dead (Pan) after just one week, for the cosy crime title's 22nd week at the top.
Christmas reads were already settled in the Mass Market Fiction chart, but last week saw a fresh flurry of activity, with Sarah Morgan's The Christmas Escape (HQ), Nancy Revell's The Shipyard Girls Under the Mistletoe (Arrow) and Heidi Swain's Under the Christmas Tree (S&S) debuting.
Despite reigning atop the Pre-School chart for much of October, Allan and Janet Ahlberg's Funnybones (Puffin) was pipped at the Halloween post, as Tom Fletcher and Shane Devries' picture book of The Christmasaurus (Puffin) jingled into the chart top spot.
The half-term holiday seemed to give the print market a shot in the arm. At 4.6 million books sold for £40.5m, volume was up 10.6% and value up 11.3% week on week. Against the same week in 2020, volume rose 6% and value 8.6%.
In the Amazon Charts, Claire Douglas' The Couple at No 9 (Penguin) held the Most-Sold: Fiction number one for a second consecutive week.