Very quiet week from May 27 to June 2. Two entries in fiction and two entries in essays and nothing should really change in a few weeks. By this I mean that the big names in publishing, Frank Thilliez, Virginie Grimaldi, Joël Dicker, Guillaume Musso should sail into the top ten places throughout the summer. Just like the more unexpected successes of this first half of 2024 made by Thomas Schlesser (Mona’s Eyes) and Philippe Colin (The Ritz Bartender), both published by Albin Michel.
As for the ladies of romance, they obviously appear in number in our list: Hazel Diaz, Morgane Moncomble, Sarah Rivens, Scarlett St. Clair, Ana Huang are indeed there, and for some of them for a long time lurette.
To this team, we must now add Alice DesMerveilles, one of the two entries of the week. Appearing in 8th place, the author of volume III of the series Heart Players, The Broken Soul is a young flight attendant by day and writer by night. She began publishing on Wattpad in early 2022 the first chapters of The Bucket List, before being published by Plumes du web. In this 3rd volume, it’s about Fall Davies, a clumsy nurse, who has never lied in her entire life, except to make people believe that she has a new guy to accompany her to her wedding. sister. She has one month left to find the ideal man…
© / The Express
The second applicant is none other than Timothée de Fombelle, a leading author of children’s literature. Alma (vol. III). Freedom (Gallimard Jeunesse) enters in 10th position. A third volume which closes his great historical adventure novel against the backdrop of the French revolution, slavery and the fight for its abolition. Alma must return to Louisiana where her little brother was sold, and Joseph does not let go of his treasure. From one side of the Atlantic to the other, in Versailles, London or New York, from the uprising in France to that of the slaves of Saint-Domingue… the great fight for freedom advances.
The triumph of Mortelle Adèle
By the way, teenagers are having a blast these days. Because if comics appeared in our Top 20 fictions, volume 21 of Mortelle Adèle, General Recess!, released on May 23, which is experiencing an express start, would be in pole position. Sales of this series aimed at 8-13 year olds, story nonsense of a little girl with a strong character and black humor exposed to the authority of adults, are, it is true, confusing: 400,000 copies (according to Edistat) sold for volume 19, published by Bayard Jeunesse and 320,000 for volume 20 published in October 2023 (drawings by Diane Le Feyer). Note that since this last volume, the screenwriter Antoine Dole, alias Mr Tan, has published his series under the label of his own publishing house, Mr Tan & Co.
Likewise, the other mega-seller in the field, Riad Sattouf, decided to create his own publishing house, Les Livres du futur. Also, Esther’s Notebooks. Stories from my 18th birthday, the final volume of the successful series, on sale since June 6, will it be the last work by Riad Sattouf to be published by Allary editions. The start of an “epidemic”?
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