Cole Burrows to the top; Oliphant hits half a million

After narrowly missing out on the top spot in the previous week, Martina Cole returns to the summit, earning her 12th UK Official Top 50 number one—and 17th Mass Market Fiction pole position—since Nielsen BookScan records began. Damaged (Headline), Cole's fourth DCI Kate Burrows novel, shifted 27,156 units through BookScan's Total Consumer Market, a 45% rise on its début week. This is Cole's second consecutive mass market title to ascend to the summit, after Betrayal (Headline) reigned for two weeks in July 2017. 

Cole swapped places with last week's number one, Sophie Kinsella's Surprise Me (Black Swan). A shame for Kinsella, as she too had a nice second seven-day surge, leaping 32% in volume (to 25,215 copies) week on week.   

There was yet another milestone for the chart's third-placed title, Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Harper). Honeyman's début has dominated the charts this year, and is the top selling book of 2018 by over 100,000 copies. With last week's haul of nearly 18,000 units, Eleanor Oliphant... has eclipsed the half a million-copy mark hitting 506,070 units. On sale for just six months, it is already the 72nd bestselling General Fiction title since accurate records began. Over the course of the first half of 2018, the book notched up seven overall and 12 Mass Market Fiction number ones.  

There was a milestone, too, for Matt Haig and his publisher Canongate. In its launch week, Haig's Notes on a Nervous Planet—his guide to negotiating one's way through our increasingly anxiety-inducing times—sold 6,098 units through the TCM, earning author and publisher their first-ever Hardback Non-Fiction Number Ones. Another notable non-fiction launch last week was Florence Welch's Useless Magic (Fig Tree). The Florence + the Machine singer's collection of lyrics, poetry and sketches sold 2,553 copies, good enough for fourth place in Hardback Non-Fiction.    

Heather Morris' The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Zaffre) has spent almost six months hovering around The Bookseller's Fiction Heatseekers (the list of top-selling novels whose authors have never cracked the Top 50), hitting number one in that chart on the week ending 30th June. But Morris broke into the Top 50 last week in 49th place with her book notching its first-ever Original Fiction number one on 3,162 copies sold. That does, however, represent the lowest weekly total for an Original Fiction number since January 2017.

The Paperback Fiction and Children's numbers ones will be familiar. It is six Children's top spots in a row for David Walliams and Tony Ross' The World's Worst Children 3 (HarperCollins Children's), whose nearly 13,000 units sold last week saw the title eclipsing the 200,000 unit-mark in just 33 days on sale. Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt (Picador), meanwhile, captured its 11th Paperback Non-Fiction top spot in the last 12 weeks.