It's a Brown, Brown World

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 3/20/2006

Even as Dan Brown spent the last several weeks enduring a plagiarism trial in the U.K. over The Da Vinci Code, things weren't all bad. His Deception Point was the top fiction seller in France at the end of last month and Angels and Demons hit #5. The illustrated edition of Da Vinci, with a new translation, debuted at #2 on the fiction list in the Czech Republic, just ahead of an older edition of Da Vinci. Angels and Demons did fall from #3 to #8 in the Czech Republic. In Spain, the best Brown could do was muster a #8 showing for Digital Fortress.

Spain's top-selling fiction title at the end of February was another American oldie-but-goodie—Memoirs of a Geisha. The Historian continued to sell well in Spain, though it dropped from the top spot it occupied in January.

The top three nonfiction sellers in France last month were all new. The #1 spot belonged to Beauvau Square, a look into the activities of the French secret service by three investigative journalists. And while two forthcoming books about Barry Bonds have been causing a stir in the U.S., a tell-all by French soccer star Jean-Jacques Eydelie, I Won't Play Again, has been a must-read for sports fans there. New to the Spanish nonfiction list was the self-help work Today, Here, Now.