High five for Cursed Child in book chart

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Little, Brown) has racked up five weeks as the Official UK Top 50 number one—but the gap is closing. According to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, the playscript sold 36,485 copies for £455,824, just 7,503 units above runner-up The Girl on the Train (Black Swan).

Cursed Child’s five weeks at the top put it on equal footing with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury), which spent five weeks at number one in July/August 2007. The playscript has now had the longest run at number one for any Children’s title since David Walliams’ Awful Auntie (HarperCollins Children’s) in September 2014. Its 1.19 million-unit volume put it in the top 40 bestselling titles of all time, after just over a month on sale.

The launch of Joe Wicks’ Channel 4 show last week propelled his two healthy eating books back up the chart. Lean in 15 and Lean in 15: The Shape Plan (both Bluebird) bounced back up to fourth and third respectively, shifting within 25 copies of each other to bring in a combined 50,961 units. While The Shape Plan surpassed 300,000 copies sold total last week and secured a 12th week as Paperback Non-Fiction number one, Wicks’ debut has now sold 900,000 copies. Only three cookbooks have sold more since records began: Jamie Oliver’s 30-Minute Meals and 15-Minute Meals (both Michael Joseph), and Delia Smith’s How to Cook (BBC).

Ian McEwan’s foetus fable Nutshell (Jonathan Cape) usurped Philippa Gregory’s Three Sisters, Three Queens (Simon & Schuster) as Original Fiction number one. This is McEwan’s seventh Original Fiction top spot in total, and his first since August 2012 with Sweet Tooth.

The recently discovered Beatrix Potter story The Tale of Kitty in Boots (Warne), published to mark 150 years since the author’s birth, sold 8,074 copies last week to debut in ninth place, comfortably taking the Children’s Pre-School chart number one.

The Richard and Judy Book Club’s autumn picks swamped the Top 50, with Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X (Penguin), Fiona Barton’s The Widow (Corgi), Susie Steiner’s Missing, Presumed (The Borough Press), Christobel Kent's The Loving Husband (Sphere) and Sharon Guskin’s The Forgetting Time (Pan) selling strongly in paperback. They rub shoulders with several Richard and Judy spring picks, including The Girl on the Train, John Grisham’s Rogue Lawyer (Hodder) and Dawn French’s According to Yes (Penguin), which are yet to drop out of the Top 50 after four months on sale.

It wasn’t only Richard and Judy influencing sales though—Waterstones’ September Fiction Book of the Month, Max Porter’s Grief is a Thing with Feathers (Faber & Faber), hit 41st place. The Non-Fiction Book of the Month, Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun (Canongate), entered the Paperback Non-Fiction chart in 13th place. Both titles also featured in the W H Smith Fresh Talent dozen for autumn 2016. Meanwhile, Waterstones’ August pick, Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography (Elliott & Thompson), continued to fly high in the Top 50, in 22nd place.