John Grisham's Rooster flies into the chart top spot

John Grisham’s The Rooster Bar (Hodder) has leapfrogged David Walliams and Tony Ross’ The World’s Worst Children 3 (HarperCollins) to claim his second week at the UK Official Top 50 number one spot within a year. His 32nd week in total in the Nielsen BookScan era, The Rooster Bar sold 24,356 copies through the TCM, just 1,316 copies more than its first three days on sale. But with The World’s Worst Children 3 shifting over 10,000 copies fewer week on week, Grisham climbed and racked up his second-bestselling week in the top spot since his move to Hodder.

It also held the Mass Market Fiction number one for a second week, making a total of 47 weeks in the top spot for the lawyer-turned-author.

The previous week’s all-male number one line-up remained the same, with Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s The President is Missing (Century) holding the Original Fiction number one, Ant Middleton’s First Man In (HarperCollins) riding the wave of Father’s Day to rack up a third week in the Hardback Non-Fiction top spot and the irrepressible Adam Kay scoring a ninth week as Paperback Non-Fiction number one with This is Going to Hurt (Picador).

While Walliams and Ross held the overall Children’s top spot, Julia Donaldson (and Axel Scheffler) did at least take the Pre-School number one with The Ugly Five (Alison Green). It also entered the Top 50 in 26th place.

In the Mass Market Fiction top 20, the highest new entry was Sarah Morgan’s How to Keep a Secret (HQ), in 20th place, while Michael Ondaatje's Warlight (Jonathan Cape) was the highest new entry in Original Fiction in ninth place, with Holly Bourne’s adult debut How Do You Like Me Now? (Hodder & Stoughton) entering the chart in 14th. Encouragingly for next week, though, there were a flurry of new entries in Fiction Heatseekers, including Sally Magnusson’s The Sealwoman’s Gift (Two Roads) and Will Dean’s Zoe Ball Book Club pick Dark Pines (Oneworld).

First Man In aside, Father’s Day buys fell away from the non-fiction charts, though Jamie Oliver’s Five Ingredients (Michael Joseph) and Anthony Beevor’s Arnhem (Viking) held firm in second and third place in Hardback Non-Fiction. In Paperback Non-Fiction, only two new entries—Chris Heath’s Robbie Williams biography Reveal (Blink) and Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe (Bloomsbury Continuum)—charted, though Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential (Bloomsbury) made a re-entry, following the announcement of the chef's death.. Of the top 10, eight titles rose compared to last week, rushing to fill the gap left by Dad-related gift purchases.

The print market slumped 10.2% in value after the previous week's Father's Day bump, yet it still outpaced a sluggish mid-June 2017, with an 8% improvement in volume and a 10.8% jump in value.