Pinch of Nom Quick & Easy goes on and on

Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson's Pinch of Nom Quick & Easy (Bluebird) has kept its grip on the UK Official Top 50 number one position for a fifth week running, scoring its sixth week in total in the top spot.

Nielsen BookScan was once again unable to provide volume and value data due to lockdown restrictions in the UK.

For a fifth straight week, Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury) and Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (Viking) completed the top three. Osman's cosy crime debut notched up a 12th straight week in the Original Fiction number one spot, beating Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol (Bantam) for the longest consecutive stretch in the category chart top spot.

Elsewhere in Original Fiction, Abigail Dean's Girl A (HarperCollins) rose into the runner-up spot and debuted in the Top 50 in 33rd place. Monique Roffey's Costa Book of the Year 2020 The Mermaid of Black Conch (Peepal Tree) entered the chart in seventh place, and also claimed the Fiction Heatseekers and Small Publishers: Fiction number ones.

Michael Connelly's Fair Warning (Orion) leapfrogged Lisa Jewell's Invisible Girl (Arrow) to swipe the Mass Market Fiction top spot—the author's first pole since The Wrong Side of Goodbye in summer 2017 and his 12th week in the top spot overall.

Though Pinch of Nom titles and The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse continued to dominate Hardback Non-Fiction, Santham Sanghera's Empireland (Viking) debuted in fifth place, just above Robert Toombs' This Sovereign Isle (Allen Lane) in sixth.

Dr Claire Bailey and Justine Pattison's The Fast 800 Easy (Short) topped Paperback Non-Fiction for a fourth week, as lockdown hit Vex King's Good Vibes, Good Life (Hay House) bounced back up to second place.

David Walliams and Tony Ross' Code Name Bananas (HarperCollins) and Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's The Smeds and the Smoos (Alison Green) once again claimed the Children's and Pre-School number one spots, respectively. Brigid Kemmerer's A Vow So Bold and Deadly (Bloomsbury) was the sole new entry in Children's and YA Fiction, in 13th place.