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Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson's Pinch of Nom: Comfort Food (Bluebird) has debuted in the Official UK Top 50 number one spot, selling 119,400 copies in its first week. The latest title from the blockbuster duo becomes their fourth in a row to debut in the overall top spot with a six-figure volume sale.
Comfort Food follows in the footsteps of 2019's Everyday Light and 2020's Quick & Easy by swiping the mid-December number one spot. While the other two dropped down the chart a week after their launch, enabling David Walliams' The Beast of Buckingham Palace (HarperCollins Children's Books) and Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (Viking) to claim the Christmas Number One respectively, could this be the year the cookbook hangs on? Of course, a diet book in the festive top spot would cancel Christmas faster than Boris Johnson.
However, Richard Osman's The Man Who Died Twice (Viking) or Guinness World Records 2022, in second and third place for last week, could leapfrog Pinch of Nom with a healthy enough surge next week.
The print market sold 8.17 million books for £74.9m, 8.2% up in volume week on week and 11% up in value. December continued to look remarkably strong, with last week up 18% in volume and 21% up in value on Week 49 in 2019.
The Man Who Died Twice leapfrogged Guinness World Records 2022 to swipe the runner-up spot, yet there were fewer than 4,000 copies between the two. The cosy crime sequel notched up its 11th week in the Original Fiction number one, with Freya Marske's A Marvellous Light (Tor) debuting in third place.
Osman also once again held the Mass-Market Fiction top spot with The Thursday Murder Club (Penguin), though its PRH stablemate Lisa Jewell's The Night She Disappeared (Penguin) thundered into second place, selling 15,260 copies in its first week. The newspapers announcing their end-of-year recommendations had a knock-on effect on the charts, with Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain (Picador) and the Sunday Times' Crime Novel of the Year, Janice Hallett's The Appeal (Viper), returning to the Mass-Market Fiction top 20.
Tim Marshall's The Power of Geography (Elliott & Thompson) boomeranged back into the Paperback Non-fiction number one for a sixth week in total, while David Walliams and Tony Ross' Gangsta Granny Strikes Again! (HarperCollins) chalked up a fourth week as the Children's bestseller.
Pinch of Nom: Comfort Food also claimed the number one in this week's Amazon Charts.