The Sentinel holds firm in the number one spot

Lee and Andrew Child's The Sentinel (Corgi) has gripped the UK Official Top 50 number one spot for a second week running, selling 28,523 copies for its first full week on the shelves in paperback.

Not only is this Child's 39th week in the Mass Market Fiction top spot, it is also the ninth spring running that a Jack Reacher title has scored a number one in the category chart. Since his first pole in 2007, Child has only missed out in spring 2012, when the eventual 19-week run of E L James' Fifty Shades of Grey (Arrow) in the top spot was just beginning.

The print market improved 1.9% in volume and 0.7% in value on the week before, the first week in 2021 that Nielsen BookScan has been able to compare volume or value sales figures. At 3.3 milllion books sold for £28m, print value was once again up on the year before, rising 5.9% on week 12 2020, the last week before the UK was plunged into its first lockdown. However, volume slid a marginal 0.8% year on year.

Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (Viking) and Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (Faber) reigned atop the Original Fiction chart once again, as the number one and runner-up respectively, as Harlan Coben's Win (Century) notched up a second week in third place.

Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury) got its claws even further into the Hardback Non-Fiction number one spot, for its 24th week, as Steven Bartlett's Happy Sexy Millionaire (Yellow Kite) made its debut in third, and seventh in the Top 50, selling 8,265 copies.

Dav Pilkey's Dog Man 10: Mothering Heights (Scholastic) was the highest new entry, charting sixth overall with 9,236 copies sold, and topping the Children's chart. Martha Mumford and Sarah Jennings' Five Little Easter Bunnies (Bloomsbury Children's) hopped right up into second place, as Peppa Loves Easter (Ladybird), Fiona Watt and Rachel Wells' That's Not My Chick (Usborne) and two editions of Mumford and Laura Hughes' We're Going on an Egg Hunt (Bloomsbury Children's) rolled into the kids' top 10.

Michelle Obama's Becoming (Penguin) held the Paperback Non-Fiction number one for a fourth week, as Vex King's Good Vibes, Good Life (Hay House) rose back up into second. Nick Pettigrew's Anti-Social (Arrow) was the highest new entry in seventh place.