The Sunday Times - UK (2021-12-19)

FICTION HARDBACKS

last

week

weeks in

top 10

1

The Man Who Died Twice

Richard Osman

(viking £18.99)

stolen diamonds worth £20 million cause

chaos for the thursday murder club

(47,370)

113

2

Better Off Dead/Lee Child and Andrew Child

(Bantam Press £20) Jack Reacher comes to the aid of

an army veteran searching for her twin brother (18,160)

27

3

A Marvellous Light/Freya Marske

(tor £16.99) A young baronet is accidentally appointed

parliamentary liaison to a magical society (11,070)

—1

4

Silverview/John le Carré

(viking £20) A bookshop owner in a small seaside town

receives a proposal from an enigmatic visitor (8,635)

59

5

The Judge’s List/John Grisham

(hodder £20) the investigator lacy stoltz pursues a

cunning serial killer who is a serving judge (8,435)

37

6

The Promise/Damon Galgut

(chatto £16.99) Booker-winning tale of the decline of

a white family in post-apartheid south Africa (7,965)

46

7

Beautiful World, Where Are You/Sally Rooney

(Faber £16.99) the lives and loves of a group

of four young friends in ireland (7,515)

612

8

Three Sisters/Heather Morris

(Zaffre £16.99) three sisters reunited at Auschwitz-

Birkenau are determined to survive (6,805)

77

9

Sharpe’s Assassin/Bernard Cornwell

(harpercollins £20) As the dust settles after the Battle

of waterloo, Richard sharpe is ordered to Paris (5,570)

98

10

Never/Ken Follett

(macmillan £20) An international crisis edges

the world closer to a third world war (5,545)

85

FICTION PAPERBACKS

last

week

weeks

in top 10

1

The Thursday Murder Club

Richard Osman

(Penguin £8.99)

Four friends in a retirement village team

up to solve a murder on their doorstep

(36,770)

131

2

The Night She Disappeared/Lisa Jewell

(Penguin £8.99) A teenage mum and her boyfriend

go out on a date night but never return (15,260)

—1

3

The Midnight Library/Matt Haig

(canongate £8.99) A magical library allows a young

woman to live life’s endless possibilities (13,400)

243

4

Girl A/Abigail Dean

(harpercollins £8.99) A lawyer reconnects with her

siblings to execute their abusive mother’s will (10,590)

511

5

It Ends With Us/Colleen Hoover

(simon & schuster £8.99) A first love’s reappearance

threatens a woman’s present relationship (10,300)

415

6

False Witness/Karin Slaughter

(harpercollins £8.99) A successful lawyer’s new client

reveals he knows a dark secret from her past (9,330)

—1

7

Dune/Frank Herbert

(hodder £9.99) Factions battle for control of an

inhospitable planet and its valuable resource (8,025)

78

8

Left You Dead/Peter James

(Pan £8.99) A man reports his wife has vanished

without a trace; Roy Grace thriller (7,310)

89

9

Where the Crawdads Sing/Delia Owens

(corsair £8.99) the coming-of-age tale of a

reclusive girl abandoned by her family (6,625)

12 56

10

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo/Taylor Jenkins

Reid (simon & schuster £8.99) An ageing hollywood

icon reflects on her relentless rise to the top (6,530)

98

MANUALS

1

last

week

—

weeks

in top 10

1

Pinch of Nom:

Comfort Food

Kate Allinson and

Kay Featherstone

(Bluebird £20) hearty,

easy and slimming

recipes (119,400)

2

last

week

1

weeks

in top 10

13

Guinness World

Records 2022

(Guinness £20)

new edition of the record

book with environmental

issues front and centre

(43,405)

3

last

week

3

weeks

in top 10

7

Private Eye Annual 2021

(Private eye £9.99)

cartoons, jokes, parodies

and sketches from the

satirical news and

current affairs magazine

(20,840)

4

last

week

2

weeks

in top 10

7

Love to Cook

Mary Berry

(BBc £26)

A collection of new

no-fuss recipes from

the chef’s BBc series

(19,305)

5

last

week

5

weeks

in top 10

9

Ripley’s Believe It

or Not! 2022

(century £20)

unusual facts, strange

stories and bizarre feats

from around the world

(12,395)

Transgender Realities in The

Lord of the Rings / Pardoning

Saruman?: The Queer in

Tolkien’s The Lord of the

Rings / The Invisible Other:

Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and

the “Feminine Lack”.

Best censorship story

Literature is open to many

interpretations, but as the

former children’s laureate

Julia Donaldson discovered,

some are more embarrassing

than others. The writer has

revealed that an original line

for her and illustrator Axel

Scheffler’s children’s classic

Superworm was changed after

an awkward conversation

with Donaldson’s longtime

publisher, Alison Green, who

objected to her opening

couplet: “Superworm is long

and pink, Superworm can

grow and shrink.” The line

was eventually replaced by

“Superworm is super-long,

Superworm is super-strong,”

which proved less vulnerable

to misinterpretation,

Donaldson said.

Report in The Guardian

Shakespeare buff of the year

Dominic Cummings’s account

of an alleged conversation in

early 2020 (denied by No 10) ,

reported in the Daily Mirror:

“Boris Johnson: ‘Dom, I want

to run something by you. Do

you think it’s OK if I spend

a lot of time writing my

Shakespeare book?’

Dominic Cummings: ‘What do

you mean?’

PM: ‘This f***ing divorce, very

expensive. And this job. It’s

like getting up every morning

pulling a 747 down the

runway. (Pause). I love

writing, I love it, I want to

write my Shakespeare book.’”

Mr Cummings added: “You

get the idea. Within a month

of the election he was bored

with the PM job and wanted

to get back to what he loves

while shaking down the

publishers for some extra

cash.”

Worst-dressed author

Elton John once mistook a

“scruffy” Bob Dylan for a staff

member at a party. “I loudly

demanded to know what the

gardener was doing helping

himself to a drink.” When it

was pointed out that this was

Dylan, Elton rushed to make

amends, proclaiming: “Bob!

Bob! We can’t have you in

those terrible clothes, darling.

Come upstairs and I will fit

you out with some of mine

at once.”

Article marking the 80th

Within a

month, Boris

was bored

by the PM job

Getty imAGes, AlAmy, BBc/mAGic liGht PictuRes, BRiGhtly stoRytime/youtuBe

attitudes” and has a plot that

“centres on a murder”.
Meanwhile, a warning about

Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two

Cities, which famously features

the guillotine, says that it
“contains scenes of violence,

execution and death”.

Report in The Mail on Sunday

Pretentious, ni?

Some of the papers presented

at the two-day Tolkien and

Diversity seminar:
Gondor in Transition:

A Brief Introduction to

birthday of Dylan, winner of

the Nobel prize for literature in

2016, The Daily Telegraph

Best author row

with publisher

This morning, Daisy May

Cooper brought us the

lockdown laughs we all

needed when she posted a

video playing a prank on the

publishers of her new memoir

called Don’t Laugh, It Will Only

Encourage Her. On a phone

call she recorded and posted

on Instagram, she is seen

asking her agents to tell

Penguin her book has to

include a story about her

“ex-boyfriends bent knob” as

a dealbreaker.

From Grazia online, which said

Cooper then took down her

Instagram account at her

agents’ insistence, only to

transfer the naughty videos

to a new one called

FreeDaisyMayCooper

Least modest author

Twitter bio

Loved by millions

of readers.

The entire bio

of @KMFollett,

ie novelist

Ken Follett

Scruffy elton on Dylan Take a seat meghan

19 December 2021 33