Origin cracks the code for a Dan Brown hat-trick

Dan Brown’s fifth Robert Langdon title Origin (Corgi) has spent a third week running at the UK Official Top 50 number one, selling 36,723 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. If the paperback title can hang on for one more week—and given it sold double that of second-placed Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (HarperCollins), that’s a very real possibility—it would become the longest-running consecutive number one of the year to date, and Brown would be level with J K Rowling on the record number of overall number ones (80).

Peter May’s I’ll Keep You Safe (Riverrun) was the highest new entry of the week, beating the newest Richard and Judy Book Club crop to third place overall. With 15,686 copies sold, May scored his highest-ever single-week volume in just three days on sale—shifting a hefty 4,098 copies more than the launch week of 2017’s Cast Iron. All six of the R&J tranche charted in the Top 50 in their first week on sale—David Baldacci's End Game (Pan), the bestseller, hit fifth place, with Rachel Hore's Last Letter Home (S&S) in 11th, Joanna Cannon's Three Things about Elsie (The Borough Press) in 19th, Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us (Pan) in 22nd, Leila Slimani's Lullaby (Faber & Faber) in 23rd and Catherine Isaac's You Me Everything (S&S) in 50th place.

The Man Booker Prize 2018 longlistees barraged into the charts en masse, with Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight (Jonathan Cape) the biggest-seller at 1,438 copies. It returned to the Original Fiction top 20, with Nick Drnaso’s graphic novel Sabrina (Granta) also hitting the chart in 20th. Sabrina leapt from 70 copies sold a week ago to 915 last week—a stunning 1,207% jump week on week. Belinda Bauer’s Snap (Bantam), Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure (Hamish Hamilton) and Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under (Jonathan Cape) all charted inside the top 1,000—with the latter jumping 3,810 places.

The five main category number ones remained the same for a third week running, with Gill Sims’ Why Mummy Swears (HarperCollins) and Origin scoring a hat-trick atop their respective fiction charts, Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet (Canongate) held off a strong challenge from Nadiya’s Family Favourites (Michael Joseph) to take the Hardback Non-Fiction number one for the fourth time, Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt (Picador) swiping a 14th week atop the Paperback Non-Fiction top 20 and David Walliams ratching up his 127th week in total in the Children’s number one, with The World’s Worst Children 3 (HarperCollins) hitting its ninth consecutive number one.

US YA author Tracy Banghart debuted in the Children’s and YA Fiction top 20 with Grace and Fury (Hodder Children's), a feminist dystopia, in second place, while Tom Fletcher and Shane Devries’ The Creakers (Puffin) hit sixth place in its first week.