Authors Translate Well in June

International authors traveled well in June. Italian writer Donna Leon's Through a Glass, Darkly debuted at #1 on the German fiction list last month. Darkly, part of the Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series, was released in the U.S. last year by Atlantic Monthly Press, which published Leon's latest, Suffer the Little Children, this May. Another woman of international mystery, Mary Higgins Clark, remained at #4 on the French fiction list with I Heard That Song Before, while Woody Allen's collection of short stories Mere Anarchy landed at #10.

Rhonda Byrne's American megaseller, The Secret, moved from the sixth slot in May in Germany to #3 last month. Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth, already a bestseller in Germany, hit the French nonfiction list in the third spot in June. In Spain, two new titles that cracked the top 10 were J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin (#6) and Günter Grass's Peeling the Onion (#9).

Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, a solid seller for Houghton Mifflin in the U.S., hit #3 in Spain in June. But it was the book above Dawkins's, Sex Code, that generated the most media interest last month in Spain. With his guaranteed ways to pick up women, author Mario Luna was on all the major Spanish talk shows and several appearances ended up on YouTube.