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Dead cert: Richard Osman's We Solve Murders romps to number one
Richard Osman has, as widely expected, soared straight to the top of the UK Official Top 50 with one of the best hardback fiction first-week performances since records began. We Solve Murders (Viking), the first in a new series from the man behind the hugely bestselling The Thursday Murder Club quartet, sold 102,257 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market in its first week.
We Solve Murders becomes one of just 12 adult fiction hardbacks to achieve volume sales of more than six-figures in just one week, a dozen titles that includes all four of Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. Despite this phenomenal performance, this is his second lowest debut week and is 30% down on the equivalent launch week last year for The Last Devil to Die. However, when compared to the first instalment in The Thursday Murder Club series in September 2020, it’s an increase of 127%—not to be sniffed at, especially as each of Osman’s previous four novels went on to shift over half a million copies each in their first 16 weeks.
The rest of Osman’s fiction offering benefited slightly from extra focus on him in bookshops this week, as sales of his paperbacks increased by 4.7% week-on-week.
It’s not all about Osman, though, as a heavy publication week also saw Jacqueline Wilson release the much-anticipated Think Again (Bantam)—the adult sequel to the four-strong Girls series last updated in 2002. Wilson had to settle for second place overall with sales of 16,336, someway behind Osman’s number one, but only one of five titles to shift more than 10,000 copies this week; Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us/It Starts with Us (Simon & Schuster) duology and Clare Douglas’ The Wrong Sister (Penguin) were the others.
Elsewhere there are new releases from Graham Norton whose latest offering Frankie (Coronet) debuts at number four in the original fiction chart, closely followed by What A Way To Go (The Borough Press) the second fiction release from Bella Mackie.
New releases abound in the Hardback Non-Fiction (HBNF) Top 20 with 12 launches led by Poppy O’Toole’s The Actually Delicious Slowcooker Cookbook (Bloomsbury). O’Toole—known to her 4.4 million TikTok and Instagram followers as Poppy Cooks—achieved a 9,486-unit haul, up 47% on the first week for O’Toole’s 2023 Actually Delicious Air Fryer offering.
It was a close-run thing, though: last week’s HBNF number one, Gillian Anderson’s Want (Bloomsbury) dropped to second, just 152 copies behind O’Toole.
Elsewhere, the 2025 edition of Christmas stalwart, the Guinness World Records debuts as the HBNF number six with sales of 3,836 copies, down 5.7% on last year’s launch week.
New releases aren’t just restricted to hardbacks though, with Stephen King entering the Mass Market Fiction (MMF) chart in fifth with Holly (Hodder) on volume sales of 7,768, a decrease of 13.1% compared to the launch week of King’s last paperback, Fairy Tale, in the run-up to Father’s Day in June 2023.
Yet Hoover returned to the top two spots of MMF with combined sales dropping more than 25% to 21,386. Last week’s number one, Hannah Grace’s Daydream (Simon & Schuster), shed nearly 7,000 units, dropping to fifth place overall.
There’s little change in the Paperback Non-Fiction chart as Cathy Glass and Rory Stewart hung on to positions one and two, while Tennessee Williams continues to benefit from the back-to-school rush moving up to third with the playscript of A Streetcar Named Desire (Penguin).
The biggest new release in the Children’s chart this week is Jonty Gentoo from picture-book dream team Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler selling 9,612 copies helping it achieve number six in the UK Official Top 50.
In total 3.67 million books were sold this week up 1.3% compared to last week, while the value has increased 5% to £35.2m. In comparison to the same week in 2023, volume is down 1.4%, while the value has decreased slightly by 3.3%.
