World's Worst Parents scores hat-trick in the charts top spot

David Walliams and Tony Ross' The World's Worst Parents (HarperCollins) has topped the UK Official Top 50 for a third week running, selling 32,013 copies. The title is now the bestselling Children's title of the year to date, albeit without the sales from the 12 weeks of lockdown Nielsen was unable to provide figures for.

David Baldacci's A Minute to Midnight (Pan) leapt to the top of the Mass Market Fiction top 20, selling 15,573 copies, with Santa Montefiore's The Secret Hours (S&S) clocking in at second.

Mary L Trump's Too Much and Never Enough (S&S) was the highest new entry in third place, with the US president's niece topping the Hardback Non-Fiction chart. The latest Trump exposé, following hot on the heels of former national security adviser John Bolton's The Room Where It Happened (S&S), shifted 15,262 copies in its first week on sale. Both books were likely boosted in sales by their subject tweeting angrily at length about their contents.

David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue (Sceptre) hit the road to the Original Fiction number one spot, leapfrogging Peter James' Find Them Dead (Pan)—and becoming only the author's second title to hit the category chart top spot, after The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Sceptre) in May 2010.

Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Bloomsbury) notched up a seventh week running as the Paperback Non-Fiction number one, as the top three remained solid on the week before. The Official Highway Code and The Official DVSA Theory Test for Car Drivers (TSO) bounded up the chart, ahead of driving tests resuming this week.

The print market seemed to settle after a blistering few weeks of sales since bookshops began reopening. With 3.3 million books sold for £28.9m, last week was down 10% in both volume and value on the week before. However, with many big hardbacks selling strongly, value was up 3.2% on the same week in 2019, with volume down just a fraction at -0.2%.