Nevermind, Osman: Dave Grohl learns to fly at the top of the chart

Dave Grohl's The Storyteller (Simon & Schuster) has rocked straight into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot in its first week on sale, selling 50,367 copies through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market.

Grohl becomes the first musician to swipe the UK top spot since Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run in autumn 2016, and Simon & Schuster's first overall bestseller since just before the pandemic—Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet's World Book Day title Supertato: Books are Rubbish, which hit the top in late February 2020.

This brings to an end the three-week run of Richard Osman's The Man Who Died Twice (Viking) in the overall top spot, though it holds the Original Fiction number one—and jumps into the top five bestseller chart for the year to date. In the Original Fiction chart, Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber) leapfrogged Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Assassin (HarperCollins) to re-claim the runner-up spot, as Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads (Fourth Estate) and Kerri Maniscalco's Kingdom of the Cursed (Hodder & Stoughton) debuted in the top five.

Osman's debut The Thursday Murder Club (Penguin) racked up its 20th week atop the Mass Market Fiction chart, as Abigail Dean's Girl A (HarperCollins) and Claire Douglas' The Couple at No 9 (Penguin) held second and third place respectively for a second week.

Stanley Tucci's Taste (Fig Tree) was the second-highest new entry in Hardback Non-Fiction, scoring third place in the category and eighth overall in its first week on shelves. 

Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad's Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love (Ebury) claimed the Paperback Non-Fiction number one for a second week running, as Tim Marshall's The Power of Geography (Elliott & Thompson) bounced into second place.

Tis the season: Janet and Allan Ahlberg's Funnybones (Puffin) rattled all the way into the Children's number one, with Peppa's Happy Halloween and Fiona Watt and Non Figg's Sticker Dolly Dressing: Halloween making similar bounces into the kids' top five. Xiran Jay Zhao's Iron Widow (Oneworld) debuted into the Children's and YA Fiction number one, closely followed by fellow fantasy title Margaret Rogerson's Vespertine (S&S Children's).

The market surpassed four million books sold for the first time in 2021 (outside of lockdown weeks), hitting 4.1 million books sold for £36.1m, a rise of 4.9% in volume and 4.6% in value week on week.

In the Amazon Charts, Grohl also hit the number one spot this week.