Cathy Kelly stays on top for HarperCollins

Cathy Kelly has retained her position at the summit of the Official UK Top 50. Once in a Lifetime (Harper) enjoyed a 32.5% sales boost week-on-week, to 36,052 copies sold, and tops the chart comfortably ahead of a fast-rising Sophie Hannah.

Sophie Hannah, a reading group favourite, enjoys her highest ever chart position this week, as her latest thriller, The Other Half Lives (Hodder) sold 23,207 copies last week and charts in second position—a vast improvement on her previous highest position of 15th overall.

Jamie Oliver's Jamie's America (Michael Joseph), expelled from last week's charts as it fell foul of The Bookseller's discounting policy, this week charts in third position overall, thanks to a 23,111 weekly sale. However, it would top the chart if it was based on sales revenue rather than volume, as the £275,140 spent on the celebrity chef's latest tome dwarfs the £147,719 spent on Once in a Lifetime.

Also new in the Top 50 this week are Kathy Lette's To Love, Honour and Betray (Black Swan) and M R Hall's début novel, The Coroner (Pan), while James Patterson's latest thriller, Alex Cross's Trial (Century), also charts for the first time. However, it is unable to supplant Ian Rankin's The Complaints from the top of the Original Fiction charts.

According to Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market data, £29.7m was spent at UK book retailers last week, down 0.8% on the previous week and down 5.3% on the same week last year, when Maeve Binchy's This Year it Will Be Different (Orion) topped the chart with a 38,596 seven-day sale.

Binchy's new novel, The Return Journey (Orion), is officially released on Thursday (17th September), but the best it can hope for is second position in next week's Original Fiction charts—as Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (Bantam) is almost certain to set a new benchmark in hardback fiction.