Cole on a roll: Betrayal at number one for a second week

Martina Cole has scored a second week in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, with Betrayal (Headline) selling 23,091 copies for £84,919. Clearly fans have stayed loyal—Betrayal’s volume was up a hefty 17% week on week and beat second-placed The Couple Next Door (Corgi) by 8,158 copies.

The Couple Next Door shouldn’t be downbeat, though, as it rose to second place in its 12th week since publication. It’s still yet to drop out of the top 10. Impressively, six of its fellow Richard and Judy Book Club titles have also hit a 12-week streak in the Top 50, shifting a combined 775,507 copies in that time.

A plethora of the previous week’s new entries flooded the top 10, with Trisha Ashley’s The Little Teashop of Lost and Found (Black Swan), Jane Corry’s Blood Sisters (Penguin) and Colson Whitehead’s Barack Obama-endorsed The Underground Railroad (Fleet) all leaping up the chart.

In its fifth week in the Top 50, Jane Harper’s The Dry (Abacus) hit the top 10 for the first time. After spending June as a Waterstones Book of the Month and shifting 31,368 copies in its first four weeks on sale, the retailer has carried over the Australian outback-set thriller into July, alongside The Underground Railroad. Week on week, The Dry jumped 12% in volume, to 8,889 copies sold.

Reality TV star Charlotte Crosby’s Brand New Me (Headline) leapfrogged Joe Wicks’ Cooking for Family and Friends (Bluebird) for the Hardback Non-Fiction number one, bringing an end to the latter's five-week run. This is the former Geordie Shore star’s second book to go to the category chart top spot, after Me Me Me! spent two weeks atop the chart in summer 2015.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens (Vintage) has topped the Paperback Non-Fiction chart for a second consecutive week, and a seventh overall. Despite racking up an 18th week running in the Top 50, it’s still improving in sales, shifting an extra 34 copies week on week. And contrary to what you’re all thinking, that’s not because it was mentioned on Love Island last night—this chart is for the week ending Saturday 8th July.

Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks’ What the Ladybird Heard on Holiday (Macmillan Children's) toppled Tom Fletcher from the Pre-School number one, beating the Gary Abbott-illustrated There’s a Monster in Your Book (Puffin) by 1,571 copies.

But David Walliams once again held the overall Children’s number one, for a seventh consecutive week and his 99th to date. While the Children’s and YA Fiction top 20 saw Walliams take six places and J K Rowling five, David Solomons’ My Evil Twin is a Supervillian (Nosy Crow) made its debut, alongside the Waterstones Children’s Book of the Month, Cornelia Funke’s Dragon Rider: The Griffin’s Feather  (Chicken House), and Zoella Book Club title Emily Barr's The One Memory of Flora Banks (Penguin).