The penultimate week before Mother’s Day saw fiction titles bounce up the Top 50. Lucinda Riley’s The Missing Sister (Pan), reigning atop the Mass-Market Fiction number one for a second week, jumped into second place, closely followed by Katie Flynn’s The Rose Queen (Penguin), which rose 15 places to third. Colleen Hoover’s former category chart number one It Ends with Us (S&S) climbed back into fourth, as Danielle Steel’s Finding Ashley (Pan) and Jenny Colgan’s Sunrise by the Sea (Sphere) rocketed from 32nd and 34th place respectively to fifth and sixth.
Fiction sales soared 10% in volume week on week and improved 28% compared to the same week in 2021, with only four titles solely authored by men in the fiction top 20 (across print formats).
Dolly Parton and James Patterson’s Run Rose Run (Century) took the Original Fiction top spot for a second week, with Marian Keyes’ Again, Rachel (Michael Joseph) maintaining second place. Anne Tyler’s French Braid (Chatto & Windus) débuted in fourth.