Fiction: Black beats personal best with latest
Holly Black’s Book of Night (Del Rey) cast a shadow in the Original Fiction number one, selling 30,357 copies in its first week on sale. This was the biggest single-week sales recorded by any number one in the category chart so far this year, and Book of Night is already the second-bestselling Sci-Fi and Fantasy title of 2022, trailing only Sarah J Maas’ House of Sky and Breath (Bloomsbury). Let’s not forget the category has had an incredible start to the year, its volume up nearly 400,000 units on 2019 (the last year with a comparable 18-week period outside of lockdown). Of course, it was an astronomical personal best for the author herself—Book of Night’s volume clocked in 980% up on Black’s previous highest weekly sale for a single title.
John le Carré’s Silverview (Penguin) leapfrogged Bella Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family (The Borough Press) to swipe the Mass-Market Fiction number one, as James Patterson’s Death of Black Widow (Penguin) climbed into the runner-up spot. Patterson’s latest Women’s Murder Club title, 22 Seconds, written with Maxine Paetro, also charted, claiming second in the Original Fiction top 20, runner-up to Book of Night. Of course, Patterson is famously prolific enough that he’s claimed both fiction category chart top spots in a single week on more than one occasion, so a J-Pattz double runner-up isn’t quite the headline news it might be for any other author.
