Potter, Brown Global Favorites

A look at the recent bestseller lists of three European countries shows the worldwide appeal of two franchises: Harry Potter and Dan Brown. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince topped the fiction charts in Germany and Sweden late in November. Brown's The Da Vinci Code held the third slot in Germany, while his Deception Point was #3 in Sweden. Looking deeper into the list, all five Potter books leading up to Half-Blood were among the top 20 sellers in Germany, while another Brown book, Digital Fortress, stood at #7.

France was not immune to Potter's charms; the latest book was released by Gallimard at the end of September and immediately hit the list, but by the end of November, the title had dropped out of the top 10. Dan Brown, however, did manage to hold on to the #10 spot in France with Angels & Demons. The second bestselling fiction work in France, Douglas Kennedy's State of the Union (or Les charmes discrets de la vie conjugale), a thriller about a woman in Maine, was published in the U.K. in October by Hutchinson and both the French- and English-language edition were selling well in France.

One noteworthy nonfiction bestseller is Swedish Cakes and Cookies, which has sold more than 3.4 million copies since it was first published more than half a century ago. Talk about a perennial backlist title!

International Bestsellers