Book sales: who are the big winners of the first semester?

We must take it for granted: the list of best-selling fiction should know little upheaval, at least until August 17, the release date of the first books of the literary season. It is therefore time to make a first small assessment. If we disregard the astonishing Kremlin Mage, by Giuliano da Empoli, present forty-five weeks in our charts (with more than 400,000 copies sold since April 2022), the big winner is none other than Pierre Lemaitre, the only survivor of the January offices with Silence and Anger, credited with 190,000 copies sold and eighteen weeks in the top 20. If we add that The Big World, volume I of his copious tetralogy entitled The Glorious Years, published in 2022, sold more than 330,000 copies in large format and 215,000 in the pocket book, we understand that the former “polardeux” has become the French master of the “popular soap opera”, and that his publisher, Calmann-Lévy, never stops rubbing his hands.

20. The Supreme Gift

by Paulo Coelho

He is always there ! Thirty-five years after the release of The Alchemist, the Brazilian continues to publish. Of course, the sales figures no longer have anything to do with those, stratospheric, of its world bestseller. The fact remains that his novels systematically appear in our top 20. This time, the Compostela pilgrim offers us an adaptation of the text by the Scotsman Henry Drummond on the letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. Lots of love in perspective…

7. Everyone called him Johnny

By Patrick Roussel

He could not publish it until June 15, 2023, the anniversary of the birth of Johnny, who would have been 80 years old. He is Patrick Roussel, driver and bodyguard of the idol from 1999 to 2016. Seventeen years of good and loyal service, from tours to road trips by Harley, from Los Angeles to Vietnam, from Marnes- la-Coquette in Gstaad, which he recounts here with sincerity. And the fans to tear it off.

United Kingdom

The Extra Mile. My Autobiography

by Kevin Sinfield

Legend of the Leeds Rhinos club and the English national rugby league team, Kevin Sinfield has also aroused admiration across the Channel by chaining challenges, including ultramarathons, in order to raise funds to fight against Charcot’s disease , which notably affects his best friend and former teammate, Rob Burrow. His Memoirs are at the top of the charts of the Sunday Times.