Sunday Salon/Paris in July: Bestsellers around the world - France

Once upon a time I had an infrequent feature called Bestsellers Around the World. The idea was that I would take a look at the bestsellers list for that week and compare it to the Australian bestsellers list. It turned out it could be quite challenging and so despite my best intentions I haven't kept it going, although I do roll it out every now and again, particularly for Paris in July.It's not always easy to find current lists that are accessible but I try!

Here are the books the readers of France are reading at the moment based on the bestseller list at Sens Critique! Please note that according to the website the last time this list was updated was in May but it was still the easiest site to navigate when trying to collate a list

La Psy (Never Lie) by Frieda McFadden

La Femme de Menage (The Housemaid) by Frieda McFadden

Les Secrets de la femme de menage (The Housemaid's Secret) by Freida McFadden

Lakestone, tome 2 by Sarah Rivens

A retardement by Franck Thilliez - The title translates to Delayed

La Prof (The Teacher) by Freida McFadden

L'Heure des predateurs by Giuliano da Empoli - Title translates to Hour of the Predators

Norferville by Franck Thilliez

Interieur nuit by Nicolas Demorand - Translates to Interior Night

La femme de meage voit tout by Frieda McFadden - I am not entirely sure which book this is. The title translates as The Cleaning Lady Sees Everything so maybe it is another edition of The Housemaid.


Some observations.

On the lists that I found that were up to date, Frieda McFadden is absolutely dominating the best seller lists in France. When I looked at the lists for Australia for this week, we had two books by her in the top 10 as well.

Franck Thilliez is an author who you consistently see on these lists. It did surprise me that there wasn't a Joel Dicker on the list for this year though.

Just outside the top ten is Maud Ankaoua. This author has had books on the bestseller lists for a number of years now, with the exception of 2024. Her tagline on her website is The novelist who brings us back to the essentials, which sounds like good reading to me.

Interesting, Anna Stuart has two books in the top 20 first with her book La Sage-Femme d'Auschwitz and then with La Sage-Femme de Berlin which have the English titles of The Midwife of Auschwitz and The Midwife of Berlin. Last year her Auschwitz book was number 1 on the list. Whilst there is obviously a strong interest in WWII history around the world, it is surprising to me that it is this author that has such consistently strong results in France. I am going to see if I can get some of her books to read.

When I look back on my previous lists, it is interesting to note that this is the first year since I started doing this 5 years ago that there has been no book by Virginie Grimaldi featured. I did enjoy the one book I read in English by her, so I will try and read more from her. There were also no books by Melissa da Costa whose books I haven't been able to find in English. She also regularly appears on this list.

On a couple of the other extended lists I found, Lucinda Riley's Seven Sisters series was doing very well.

Does anything on this list surprise you?