Two More Books from Richard Osman as The Thursday Murder Club clinches #1 Spot
In the week that Richard Osman’s debut The Thursday Murder Club shot to the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list and became the fastest selling adult fiction debut since J.K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, Viking is delighted to announce the acquisition of the third and fourth novels in his The Thursday Murder Club series.
Publisher Katy Loftus acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights, including audio, from Juliet Mushens at Mushens Entertainment for the third and fourth novels in Osman’s crime series. Rights to The Thursday Murder Club have sold in 16 countries around the world so far.
These new books will follow The Thursday Murder Club 2 (title soon to be revealed) publishing in September 2021, the action of which begins on the Thursday after the first novel ends. Osman has promised readers, ‘Everyone who survives the first book will return in book number two’.
The Thursday Murder Club is the second fastest selling adult debut novel on BookScan records, and the OVERALL Number One bestseller in its part-week with over 45k HB orders in its first week, and over 72k across all formats. It hit the Amazon books chart #1 spot one week out from publication, not leaving the Top Two spot since, and became Waterstones’ bestselling hardback of the week on its first day of publication. Jennifer Saunders has warned that The Thursday Murder Club is ‘too gripping’ to be read in the bath while Ian Rankin has called it ‘deplorably good’.
On publication day of The Thursday Murder Club, Pat Booth of Plackitt & Booth Bookshop in Lytham St Anne’s, Scotland, said, ‘We haven’t seen anything like it since Harry Potter!’ Bea Carvalho, fiction buyer at Waterstones has said: ‘Smart, funny, and filled with killer one-liners, [The Thursday Murder Club] is a thoroughly contemporary take on a classic murder mystery’ while Simon Johnson, director for books at Amazon EU, said ahead of publication that The Thursday Murder Club ‘will delight crime fiction and fans of general fiction alike with its mix of British humour and small village life’.
Richard Osman is the Creative Director of Endemol Shine. Richard rose to fame presenting Pointless with Alexander Armstrong and presents his own BBC quiz, House of Games, along with Insert Name Here and Child Genius. He is also a regular on panel shows such as Have I Got News For You and Would I Lie To You.
Katy Loftus said: ‘I knew from the second I started reading The Thursday Murder Club that Richard Osman had an innate talent for fiction and that this world he’d created was very special. So it has been truly remarkable to see the reaction to this book from all of the retailers we work with, the media, and most particularly from readers. I’ve just finished reading an impossibly brilliant early draft of the second book in the series and I can’t wait to share it, and then book 3 and 4 after that with fans.’
Richard Osman said: ‘I have honestly been overwhelmed by the reaction to The Thursday Murder Club, and am so delighted that readers are taking it to their hearts. Absolutely thrilled to be continuing this adventure with the incredibly talented team at Viking.’
Juliet Mushens said: ‘The Thursday Murder Club was one of my highlights of last year, and when Richard delivered a sequel which was just as funny, sharp, and page-turning as the first, I was over the moon. I am thrilled that we’re going to have at least two more adventures with our intrepid gang – the team at Viking have knocked it out of the park with this book and I can’t wait for the series to achieve even more accolades in the coming years!’
Viking will publish The Thursday Murder Club 2 in September 2021 with the third and fourth novels in the series to follow in 2022 and 2023. Rights to The Thursday Murder Club have now sold in 16 countries around the world.