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Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson's Pinch of Nom Quick & Easy (Bluebird) has soared straight into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, with 133,116 copies sold in its first week on the shelves.
This makes it by far the fastest-selling title of the year to date (excluding lockdown weeks) and marginally up on last December's Pinch of Nom: Everyday Light, which sold 129,985 units on its launch.
After the end of lockdown in early December, Nielsen BookScan was able to report volume and value figures again. Print books sold 9.17 million copies for £84.7m over the first full week post-lockdown, up 15% in volume and 17% in value against the same week in 2019. In value terms, it was 2% away from 2019's final run-up to Christmas, with still a week to go.
Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (Penguin) leapfrogged Barack Obama's A Promised Land (Viking) in the Top 50, with the debut crime novel shifting an eye-watering 122,240 copies last week. Only three authors (across six titles) have had bigger single-week sales in the Original Fiction top spot, with The Thursday Murder Club the highest since Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman (William Heinemann) was released in July 2015.
Award-winners Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain (Picador) and Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet (Tinder) also performed strongly in the Original Fiction top five, with the Booker winner shifting 31,369 copies in a single week. Hamnet, named both the Women's Prize in September and the Waterstones Book of the Year earlier this month, thundered into 17th place in the Top 50 with 18,891 copies sold.
Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing (Corsair) held the Mass Market Fiction number one, as Christy Lefteri's The Beekeeper of Aleppo (Manilla) and Lucy Foley's The Guest List (HarperCollins) rose into the top three. Adele Parks' Just My Luck (HQ), part of the latest Richard and Judy Book Club tranche, debuted in sixth.
Billy Connolly's Tall Tales and Wee Stories (Two Roads) leapfrogged Joe Wicks' 30 Day Kick Start Plan (Bluebird) to reclaim the Paperback Non-Fiction number one, with 11,054 copies sold.