Osman and Rowling books most popular digital titles borrowed from libraries

Works by Richard Osman, Kazuo Ishiguro and J K Rowling are among the most popular digital titles borrowed from libraries, according to OverDrive, which provides e-book, audiobook, digital magazine and digital newspaper access to more than 3,000 libraries up and down the country.

Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (Viking) was the most popular e-book borrowed from UK public libraries in 2021, followed by Matt Haig's The Midnight Library (Canongate) and Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (Faber). Ellery Adams' The Secret, Book & Scone Society (Kensington Publishing) was fourth, Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain (Picador) was fifth and Lee Child's The Sentinel (Transworld) was sixth. Ann Cleeves' The Darkest Evening (Macmillan) was seventh, Natalie D Richards' Five Total Strangers (Sourcebooks) was eighth, while Marian Keyes' Grown Ups (Penguin Michael Joseph) was ninth and Julia Quinn's Bridgerton Collection, Volume 1 (Piatkus) was 10th. 

In the audiobook charts, J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Bloomsbury Children's Books) was the most popular, followed by Cold Mourning by Brenda Chapman (Dundurn), A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin (Orion) and Becoming by Michelle Obama (Penguin). Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (Faber) was fifth, while The Coffinmaker's Garden by Stuart MacBride (HarperCollins) was sixth, Mythos by Stephen Fry (Penguin Michael Joseph) was seventh, Butterfly Kills by Brenda Chapman (Dundurn) eighth, Grown Ups by Marian Keyes (Penguin Michael Joseph) ninth and Still Life by Val McDermid (Little, Brown) 10th. 

Nick Forster, regional manager for OverDrive, said: ”The staff running public libraries have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to adapt their services to meet their community’s changing needs, and we’re proud to have played a part in helping them provide so much of what borrowers want. A lot of people discovered their libraries’ digital collections for the first time during lockdown, and we’re seeing that their use of online services is continuing to grow even as library branches have been able to reopen.”