Hannah Grace’s Daydream heads a Simon & Schuster quartet at the top of the charts

Hannah Grace’s Daydream retained the number one for the second week in a row, leading a quartet of Simon & Schuster titles heading up the UK Official Top 50⁠ – the first time the publisher has bagged the first four spots since accurate records began.

Grace’s third book in her Maple Hills series sold 15,453 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market last week, just a few hundred units ahead of her S&S stablemate Colleen Hoover whose It Ends with Us moves back up to second place. Hoover’s sequel It Starts with Us moves up into fourth place, while Bob Mortimer’s latest, The Hotel Avocado, completes Simon & Schuster’s domination at the peak of the top 50.

The Hotel Avocado continues its run at the summit of the Original Fiction chart with the rest of the top five in that chart shuffling around slightly. This week’s highest new entry The Masquerades of Spring by Ben Aaronvitch (Orion) – his latest Rivers of London novella⁠ – hit sixth place, and 47th in the overall chart. With 4,054 units in its launch, Aaronvitch’s newest is 5% up on the last Rivers of London novella, Winter’s Gifts, published in June 2023.

Simon & Schuster’s dream team of Grace and Hoover continues to suck up the top three spots in the Mass Market Fiction top 20, with the only new entry into the top 10 being Elsie Silver’s Wild Eyes (Piatkus). The second in the Rose Hill series from Silver has achieved sales of 13,829 in its first week, up nearly 3,000 units from Wild Love’s first week back in April of this year.

It’s a different story in the Non-Fiction Hardback chart this week with seven new entries in the top 10 led by Gillian Anderson’s much-publicised Want (Bloomsbury) shifting 12,712 copies. In comparison, the “X-Files” and “Sex Education” star’s previous non-fiction offering—We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere (HarperCollins), written with Jennifer Nadel – sold 2,929 copies in its first week back in March 2017.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s On Leadership (Hutchinson Heinemann) debuts at number five with 4,285 units, although that is considerably down on his 2010 memoir which managed 92,060 copies in its first week (a TCM political memoir record), but more than Anthony Seldon’s look at Liz Truss’ 49 days as PM, Truss at 10 (Atlantic) which slips out of the top 20 this week.

Adding the latest Yotam Ottolenghi’s Ottolenghi COMFORT (Ebury), a collection of wisdom and poetry from Donna Ashworth and new releases from Tim Minchin, William Dalrymple and Jay Rayner to the mix,  means that last week’s HBNF number one, Speedy Weeknight Meals (Bloomsbury) by Jon Watts, drops to 10th this week.

Back-to-school fever continues across the charts with the Oxford Mini English Dictionary still appearing in HBNF and "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams reappearing at number six in the Non-Fiction Paperback Non-Fiction (PBNF) chart.

Williams’ classic is the only new entry into this week’s PBNF top 10 with Helpless by Cathy Glass (HarperElement) and Politics on the Edge (Vintage) by Rory Stewart holding onto the top two positions.

The overall top 50 sees a re-entry from reading list staple J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (Heinemann) which has shot to the top of the Children’s chart, with Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures (Bloomsbury Children’s) climbing to second position with 5,098 copies sold – nearly doubling its performance on the previous week.

One other notable new entry into the Children’s chart is Ten Little Pumpkins by Mike Brownlow as our youngest readers already start to look ahead to the October half term⁠ – it carves out a home for itself at number 12 this week.

Overall, a total of 3.62 millions books were sold this week at a value of £33.5m – this is 1.3% volume increase and a 2.8% value increase versus last week. Looking back to the same week in 2023, volume has increased 10% with a value increase of 8.8%.