Amazon Charts: Stephen Hawking soars into the stratosphere

Stephen Hawking's Brief Answers to the Big Questions (John Murray) has rocketed to the top of the Amazon Charts' Most-Sold: Non-Fiction chart, as Val McDermid's A Place of Execution (HarperCollins) cleaved into the Most-Sold: Fiction number one. Hawking's posthumously published title was briefly priced at 99p in digital last week.

Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand's Finding Freedom (HarperCollins), an account of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, rose to second place a week ahead of its publication and earned the "most anticipated" tag in the chart. James Nestor's Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (Penguin) also debuted in the top three.

Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls (Penguin) and Barbara O'Neal's staycation-friendly The Lost Girls of Devon (Lake Union) also hit the top 20 Most-Sold: Fiction.