Impossible, obviously, to escape the Swiss tornado which is sweeping through French bookstores and settling on the highest step of our podium. A savage animal, Joël Dicker’s 7th novel, in fact recorded no less than 100,000 copies in one week, according to Edistat. Certainly, the work was printed in 450,000 copies (!), the fact remains that this start is thunderous – so much so that the house founded by its author in 2021, Rosie & Wolfe, has once again carried out a new printing of 50,000 copies . In A savage animal, Dicker recounts a heist in a jewelry store in Geneva and the consequences it will have on five characters, including a banker and a police officer, while a mysterious prowler emerges. And the sauce sets. And even overflows, the pocket format of his previous thriller, The Alaska Sanders Affairpublished the same day, already exceeding 50,000 copies sold.
It is also impossible to forget the King of thrillers, the American Stephen King, who lands in 3rd place in the fiction charts with Holly. “With this new masterpiece, we find Stephen King at the height of horror, and his investigator Holly, famous heroine of the trilogy Mr Mercedes and of The outsider“, warns its publisher, Albin Michel. The story takes place in a small town in the Midwest which sees a series of young people disappear not far from the home of a couple of “peaceful” retirees. Attention lovers of thrills… There had to be a representative of dark romance among the entrants. This time, it is the Nantes-based Joyce Kitten who publishes Borderline. Volume 2 (volume 1 was released in January by Hugo Roman) and took 7th place.
© / The Express
Very very nice start also for the latest born from Aurélie Valognes, Line, released on February 28 and which is already at 13th place. The former marketing director of an American company has accumulated successes, and not the least (her Even…sold more than a million copies). In Line, her 10th novel, the graduate of Sup de Co Reims evokes the epistolary friendship between two women writers of two generations, and thereby deals with transmission and the pangs of creation. Finally, bringing up the rear, the British queen of cozy crime, the late MC Beaton (1936-2019), whose opuses Albin Michel tirelessly publishes (notably those of the series Agatha Raisin). This week, it’s two volumes of the series Hamish Macbethvolume XXI, The rules of art and the 22nd, Swift sweepa double that we find in 18th and 20th ranks in the list.
A quick glance at the best-selling essays? Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur continues her race in the lead with How is it not going? Conversations after October 7 (Grasset), followed by the astonishing Philippe Boxho, who places his two books, Interview with a corpse. A forensic doctor makes the dead speak And The dead speak, in the 2nd and 3rd rows. Incredible destinies are those of these two works published respectively in June 2023 and June 2022. It is true that the forensic doctor Philippe Boxho, director of the Forensic Institute of the University of Liège, thrills the imagination with the story of the cases he had to deal with, between disappearances, suicides and suspicious deaths – his interviews on YouTube have more than 4 million views… We will also point out the irruption, in 5th place in the essay Technopolitics. How technology makes us soldiers (Threshold) of the academic and specialist in the political and geopolitical issues of Tech, Asma Mhalla, and the entry, in 19th place, of the survey In the pay of Moscow (Threshold) by journalist Vincent Jauvert.
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