Nature writer Chloe Dalton topped the bestseller charts last month at The Rye Bookshop with her tender tale of rescuing an abandoned leveret and nursing it back to health. Raising Hare has caught the imagination of Rye readers with its thoughtful prose and restorative message of care.
Meanwhile, Lucy Foley’s Midnight Feast also delighted customers with its psychological twists and turns.
Our third title has had a controversial couple of weeks. Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path was the focus of a feature by The Observer, which claimed the author had misled readers about her financial status, the nature of her bankruptcy and the truth about her husband’s illness. Claims, we should note, that the author has denied. The flurry of news has not stopped readers from falling in love with her travelogue set around the shores of Devon and Cornwall. Perhaps grab a copy and judge for yourself. Fiction, or non-fiction?
The Safekeep is by a debut writer, Dutch novelist Yael van der Wouden. This tale of post-war Netherlands, the fourth on our list had already been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, before it went on to take the Women’s Prize for Fiction last month, bringing the book to wider attention. And, it is continuing its bestselling run into July.
TV legend and the bestselling author in the UK, Richard Osman, maintains momentum into the second month of the paperback release of his new series We Solve Murders, a global murder mystery taken on by an eclectic band of detectives. Don’t worry, Thursday Murder Club fans! You can relax knowing that the silver-haired sleuths return in October for a new adventure, The Impossible Fortune.
Elizabeth Strout and Bob Mortimer respectively fill the sixth and seventh slots in our top ten. Of course, they will be no strangers to the people of Rye judging by the historic and continuing success of their previous books.
The eighth title on our bestseller countdown is one unlikely to appear on national lists but should not be dismissed for that. Xiaolu Guo’s fascinating memoir, My Battle of Hastings, looks at the exiled Chinese artist’s time in Hastings, her troubles and her joys.
Our ninth title cannot help but bring a smile to our faces. The four-legged friend (and outrageous scene-stealer) from Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing has put paw to paper to give us his tell-all account of the stories behind the show. A genial friendly read by the Patterdale Terrier Ted, for sure.
Last (but by no means least), the literary powerhouse that is Sally Rooney continues to draw admirers with Intermezzo, a story of two brothers navigating the lives and loves in the wake of their father’s death.
Image Credits: Richard Hayden .