Sales of crime writer Harriet Tyce’s books are up 95.6% week on week since her debut as a contestant on the fourth season of BBC’s The Traitors, which launched on 1st January 2026.
According to NielsenIQ BookData, weekly sales across all of Tyce’s books are up from 181 copies to 354, mostly driven by her most recent publication A Lesson in Cruelty, which was published by Headline’s Wildfire imprint in April 2024.
Furthermore, The Lies You Told, published in July 2020, sold 263 copies last week – 93.4% more than the previous week.
The Bookseller understands Gardners is currently out of stock of Tyce’s books, however a spokesperson from Headline said: “We do have lots of backlist stock available in the market across all her titles.”
Alex Call, founder and owner of Bert’s Books and The Bookseller charts editor, said: “We at Bert’s have put her books front and centre on one of our tables, and have sold a few more copies because of that, but readers haven’t quite made the connection between The Traitors and her books yet.” Jane Streeter at The Bookcase in Nottinghamshire told The Bookseller: “We ordered titles in as soon as I saw the first episode, [it’s] definitely generating interest!”
Born and educated in Edinburgh, Tyce graduated from Oxford University in 1994 with a degree in English Literature before working as a criminal barrister for nearly a decade.
In 2017, she graduated from the University of East Anglia with an MA in Creative Writing – Crime Fiction, and her debut Blood Orange was published by Wildfire in 2019. It was a Sunday Times bestseller, won a Nielsen gold award in 2020, and was translated into 27 languages. The Lies You Told, It Ends at Midnight and A Lesson in Cruelty followed.
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Her latest novel, Witch Trial, is scheduled for publication on 26th February 2026. Its synopsis reads: “When 18-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in an Edinburgh park, the city reels – and the shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with her murder. As social media explodes and headlines scream for justice, rumours of bullying spiral into something darker: whispers of rituals, obsession and a teenage pact gone wrong.
“Matthew Phillips, a respected heart surgeon, is reluctantly called for jury duty on the case. But as the trial unfolds – and the girls reveal a chilling defence no one saw coming – he begins to question everything: the motives, the evidence, even his own judgement. Who’s telling the truth? Who can be trusted? And what really happened to Christian Shaw?”
When asked why she applied to go on The Traitors, Tyce said: “I’ve watched the show and love it – it’s one of the very few TV shows that I think I have a skill set that could be useful for. I’m a crime writer and used to be a criminal barrister. I spend my life making up horrible ways for people to die and killing people on the page. The idea that I might get to actually plot to kill people or to track down a murderer, but, you know, without actual blood being shed, it’s the closest that I’d get to that experience in real life. So quite honestly, what’s not to like?”
She said that, if she won, she would donate the prize money to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, “as many dear friends have been affected by the disease, including one of my best friends who sadly died in 2021 from secondary breast cancer”.
“It’s been a wonderful start to 2026 to see Harriet on the show, especially Saturday’s episode,” a Headline spokesperson said. “We’re so pleased that the nation is discovering Harriet’s sharp and incisive mind. We’re all cheering her on.”
Meanwhile in the charts, Frieda McFadden continues to dominate, with the Bookseller’s latest analysis here.