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Kinney’s Wrecking Ball smashes second week at top
Jeff Kinney’s 14th Wimpy Kid title, Wrecking Ball (Puffin), has notched up a second week in the UK Official Top 50 number one, selling 42,015 copies in its first full week on sale. It achieves Kinney’s 15th week in the overall top spot and his fourth this year alone, with his World Book Day title, Diary of Greg Heffley’s Best Friend, reigning for a fortnight in the spring.
Adam Kay’s Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas (Picador) rose to second place, with Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury) galloping up with it into third, as Lee Child’s Blue Moon (Bantam) slipped to third.
Tyson Fury’s Behind the Mask (Century) was the highest new entry in fifth place, selling 19,531 copies in its first three days on sale. Fellow sportsman Ben Stokes also entered the Top 50, with On Fire (Headline) shifting 5,279 units.
Anne Glenconner’s Lady in Waiting (Hodder & Stoughton) spiked in sales, in the week leading up to the start of Netflix’s “The Crown” and following the author’s appearance on Graham Norton’s BBC show. Week on week, it improved 137% in volume to 15,960 copies sold and soared into eighth place overall.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag: The Scriptures (Sceptre) also made its debut in the Top 50, shifting 6,293 copies to claim 36th place.
Lucy Foley’s giant-killing The Hunting Party (HarperCollins) toppled David Baldacci’s Redemption (Pan) in the Mass Market Fiction number one spot. The Waterstones Thriller of the Month sold 12,590 copies to leapfrog the Amos Decker title.
Blue Moon held the Original Fiction number one for a third week running, while Ian Rankin’s Westwind (Orion) debuted in second place.
The print market jumped 7% in both volume and value week on week, to 4.2 million books sold for £37.1m, its highest for the year to date. Though last week lagged behind the same week in 2018, the later-than-usual launch of David Walliams and Tony Ross' The Beast of Buckingham Palace (HarperCollins) will no doubt re-balance the scales next week.
