spring bestsellers – L’Express

What calm on the fiction side! Not the slightest entry in our Top 20 list from May 6 to 12, just the return of a few veterans and the departure of a few others. So it’s time to take a look at the sales figures, not to despair authors who are struggling to see their books sell, but to get an idea of ​​the sales of this spring’s bestsellers.

We will start with the “super-varnishes”, those which exceed 200,000 copies (according to Edistat). Primus inter pares, Joël Dicker, whose 7th novel, A savage animal (Rosie & Wolfe), released on February 27, has sold more than 270,000 copies (excluding the author’s native Switzerland). We are still far from the 450,000 copies (excluding paperback) of his previous opus, The Alaska Sanders Affairbut time will perhaps do the trick… Behind him, Guillaume Musso, who with Someone else (Calmann-Lévy), dating from March 5, is close to 230,000. Same observation as with Dicker if he wants to reach 470,000 copies (excluding paperback) ofAngelic.

Let’s now move on to those who have crossed the 100,000 mark. Starting with the Algerian dark romanceSarah Rivens whose volume 1 of the series Lakestone (HLab), published on January 12, reached 190,000 copies, while the first part of Captive, released on June 24, 2022, still present in the Top 30, has sold 400,000 copies.

Behind her, the big surprise of this 2024 school year, Thomas Schlesser, whose novel Mona’s Eyes (Albin Michel) reached 175,000 copies. Then the American Ana Huang, another novelist queen of romance, who exceeds 115,000 with the first volume of Twisted (Hugo Roman, released October 18, 2023) and the 20,000 with its volume IV (Twisted Lies, published on April 24). Let’s take this opportunity to evoke the cardboard in the same register of Morgane Moncomble and her series Seasons also published by Hugo Roman (185,000 for An autumn to forgive you110,000 for A winter to resist you and 85,000 for A spring to succumb to you).

Far from these stratospheric figures but published only a few days ago, Virginie Grimaldi emerges in 1st position (40,000 copies with Bigger than the skyFlammarion), in second place Franck Thilliez (same sales figure for Norferville at Fleuve Editions) and at the 14th Bernard Minier (The Erased, XO editions, 60,000). Finally come, in the order of appearance in our list, Edouard Louis (Monique escapesSeuil, 20,000 copies), Hervé Le Tellier (The Name on the WallGallimard, 15,000), Laurent Gounelle (An almost perfect worldMazarine, 13,000), Paul Auster (BaumgartnerSouth Acts, 30,000), Michael McDowell (KatieMr. Toussaint Louverture, 25,000), Philippe Collin (The Ritz Bartender, Albin Michel, 12,000), Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (The Crossing of Times (vol. IV). The light of happinessAlbin Michel, 25,000) and Alain Damasio (Silicon ValleyThreshold, 22,000).