Lee Child makes it two weeks at number one

Lee Child’s Make Me (Bantam) has held the number one spot for a second consecutive week, selling 36,697 copies for £138,058, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. The 20th Jack Reacher title improved its volume 5.87% on the week before. In total, Make Me has sold 71,521 copies since its release, the highest two-week total for any Child number one.

Joe Wicks and Alfie Deyes held the second and third spots respectively, so the top three remains identical to the week before. Wicks’ Lean in 15 (Bluebird) increased in volume for a second week running, jumping 8.2% to 22,410 copies sold, and once again trumped Make Me in value, bringing in £182,198 to the paperback’s £138,058.

Lean in 15 has now sold just 981 copies fewer than Dr Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer’s The Fast Diet (Short), which is the 50th bestselling non-fiction title of all time. Wicks’ debut is also the longest-running consecutive Paperback Non-Fiction number one, at 14 weeks, since, interestingly, The Fast Diet, which held the top spot for 19 weeks in 2013. The Fast Diet is the biggest-selling Fitness & Diet title of the decade.

YouTuber Alfie Deyes’ The Scrapbook of My Life (Blink) held on to third place, while Dorothy Koomson’s That Girl from Nowhere (Arrow) rocketed 27 places up the chart to take fourth place, selling 9,229 copies. Diane Chamberlain’s Pretending to Dance (Pan) also shot upwards to fifth, displacing Julia Heaberlin’s Black-Eyed Susans (Michael Joseph), which slipped to sixth.

All 10 World Book Day titles disappeared en masse from the Top 50 last week, though over the Easter holidays general children’s titles have held strong. Waterstones Children’s Book Prize winner David Solomons’ My Brother is a Superhero (Nosy Crow) climbed to 27th place, charting as the filling in a David Walliams/Jeff Kinney sandwich.

Bear Grylls’ Ghost Flight (Orion) leapt 73 places to enter the Top 50, as his Channel 4 TV show “The Island with Bear Grylls” returned for a third series last week. Speaking of television, John le Carre’s The Night Manager (Penguin) jumped to 15th  place and had its best-ever week, with 5,827 copies sold, after the finale of its BBC adaptation was broadcast on Easter Sunday. The original 2013 edition, without Tom Hiddleston on the cover, also sold strongly, shifting 3,057 copies to chart 58th.

Wilbur Smith held the Original Fiction number one with Predator (HarperCollins), as Mary Berry’s Foolproof Cooking (BBC) scored a seventh non-consecutive week atop the Hardback Non-Fiction chart. This makes the combined ages of our two hardback bestselling authors 164 years in total, 30 years more than the ages of Mass Market Fiction number one Lee Child, Children’s chart-topper David Walliams and Paperback Non-Fiction bestseller Joe Wicks put together.