Weekly E-Ranking: the second Honeyman

A week ago it seemed Eleanor Oliphant... had packed her trunk and bade farewell to the Weekly E-Book Ranking number one spot forever, but as the print charts have taught us, the Honeyman period is a long way from being over. The Costa First Novel Award-winner returned to spend a 16th week at the top of the e-book list, with its old companion The Tattooist of Auschwitz also returning, into second place. It means Peter James’ Dead if You Don’t, which spectacularly interrupted the party a week ago, was banished to third place. Since the first week of March, the Oliphant–Tattooist team has topped the weekly chart nine times.

Stephen King’s The Outsider was the highest new entry, charting fourth in a dry week for fresh-faced releases—only Russell Brand’s Recovery (18th) and Philip Roth’s
Portnoy’s Complaint (16th) joined him. Roth enters the exclusive club of authors who have débuted in the Weekly E-Book Ranking posthumously, seemingly as a direct result of the news of their deaths breaking. The varied bunch includes Stephen Hawking, Carrie Fisher, A A Gill and Philip Kerr.

Former seven-week number one Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale returned to the ranking, as the television adaptation’s second series returns to make Sunday nights even more depressing. Another former number one, Michael Connelly’s Two Kinds of Truth—a nine-week veteran of the e-book chart following its hardback release—made a return in 11th place, following its paperback publication a week ago.

Some of the year’s most-persistent e-book ranking hangers-on rebounded back into the list in the run-up to the late May Bank Holiday weekend—likely the starting gun for the beginning of the holiday reading period. Former number ones Jojo Moyes’ Still Me and Dan Brown’s Origin—both, crucially, still only available in hardback in print—bounced back into the top 20, with David Lagercrantz’s The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, David Baldacci’s The Fallen and Kate Mosse’s The Burning Chambers all climbing week on week too.

Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt racked up a 12th week in the e-book chart, as it dominates the Paperback Non-Fiction top 20 in print. It’s only three weeks shy of breaking Saroo Brierley’s Lion record as the non-fiction title with the longest stay in the weekly digital list, which stands at 14 weeks.