Richard and Judy's book list

Richard and Judy have finished introducing their summer reading list, guaranteeing instant success for the featured texts. If you doubt us, take a look at the current UK top-six bestsellers, five of which come from their list.

Interest in their choices seems to continue unabated, showing an unerring ability to keep selecting crowd pleasers. The credit falls to the show's producer, Amanda Ross, who has managed to sustain industry and public interest within a much imitated format. She is seen as the biggest player in the UK book market. This season's selection features only one familiar book, Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, a vampire thriller which has fascinated post-Da Vinci Code Americans for the last year. Also on the list is Jim Lynch's The Highest Tide, the tale of an American boy who attains celebrity status after finding a giant squid near his seaside home. Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland (writing under a very Ludlum-like pseudonym) appears as Sam Bourne with his debut The Righteous Men, a formulaic, American-set thriller. The most popular book on the list has been The Island by Victoria Hislop, a summer love story, presumably written with a vivid imagination by Hislop, the wife of the smug and unlovable Private Eye editor Ian Hislop.