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*--* SO. CAL. RATING Fiction LAST WEEK WEEKS ON LIST
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*--* 1 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Doubleday: $24.95) A 1 42 Louvre curator’s killing leads to clues hidden in Leonardo’s paintings and a secret society with something to hide.
2 The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom 2 15 (Hyperion: $19.95) An amusement park maintenance man faces his life, death and afterlife in this three-part parable.
3 The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier (Dutton: -- 1 $23.95) A 15th-century artisan meets his patron’s daughter while designing the now-famous tapestries for the nobleman’s great hall.
4 The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson (Little, Brown: 3 7 $27.95) Lawman Alex Cross investigates the disappearance of pretty women and uncovers a sex-slave ring run by a Russian mobster.
5 Bleachers by John Grisham (Doubleday: $19.95) A former 10 16 star quarterback returns home to join a vigil for his dying high school coach and meets a woman he abandoned years before.
6 Trojan Odyssey by Clive Cussler (Putnam: $27.95) Dirk 8 6 Pitt rushes to rescue his undersea exploring twins as a mega-hurricane bears down on the Caribbean and a luxury floating hotel.
7 Pompeii by Robert Harris (Random House: $24.95) An 6 7 engineer repairing an aqueduct near Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79 notes ominous signs of its imminent eruption.
8 Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King (Donald 11 8 M. Grant/Scribner: $35) Roland and friends fight to save the Dark Tower in a farm community and midtown Manhattan.
9 The Murder Room by P.D. James (Knopf: $25.95) Adam 5 7 Dalgliesh investigates the murder of an unpopular museum trustee that echoes a famous homicide depicted in the museum’s Murder Room.
10 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Ecco Press: $29.95) A 15 2 new translation, by Edith Grossman, of the exploits of the idealistic Spanish knight-errant and his faithful Sancho Panza.
11 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (Farrar, Straus & 12 5 Giroux: $24) A WWII war hero goes to a town near Hiroshima, where he befriends a teenage girl and her terminally ill brother.
12 The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger -- 4 (MacAdam/Cage: $25) A librarian on one of his mysterious travels in time falls in love with a teenage heiress.
13 Old School by Tobias Wolff (Knopf: $22) A New England -- 8 prep school scholarship student with literary ambitions tries to win an audience with Ernest Hemingway.
14 The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (Houghton Mifflin: $24) An 7 6 immigrant Bengali couple and their son, named for the writer Nikolai Gogol, experience cultural jolts in America.
15 Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam: $26.95) Forensic 13 11 pathologist Kay Scarpetta is drawn into a series of gruesome murders in Louisiana bayou country.
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*--* SO. CAL. RATING Nonfiction LAST WEEK WEEKS ON LIST
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*--* 1 Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore (Warner Books: 1 13 $24.95) Advice from the veteran gadfly on how to take back the country from the conservative forces currently running it.
2 Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken 2 21 (Dutton: $24.95) A heaping dose of subversive wit aimed at political leaders and pundits on the right and left.
3 Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott (Bloomsbury: 9 14 $14.95) An eclectic compendium of facts, diagrams, symbols and just about everything you always wanted to know.
4 The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren (Zondervan: 6 12 $19.99) How the “God-ordained” principles of worship, community, discipleship, ministry and evangelism bring fulfillment.
5 Down and Dirty Pictures by Peter Biskind (Simon & -- 1 Shuster: $26.95) A look at the rise of indie films and the influence of the Sundance Film Festival and Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s Miramax.
6 The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Laura -- 1 Schlessinger (HarperCollins: $24.95) Talk-show host tells how to manage the “very simple creature” that is man.
7 Broken Music by Sting (Bantam Books: $26) A memoir by the -- 5 British rock star of his working-class childhood and his ascent to the pinnacle of success with the band the Police.
8 The World According to Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers 7 9 (Hyperion: $16.95) Some of the collected wisdom (and a few songs) from the late, beloved television personality.
9 Her Husband by Diane Middlebrook (Viking: $25.95) A look -- 1 at the unique emotional, intellectual and literary bond that was the marriage of writers and poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
10 The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (New World Library: 8 66 $21.95) How to improve one’s relationships and find contentment and even happiness by living in the now.
11 Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same by Sloan Tanen -- 1 (Bloomsbury: $14.95) A satirical take on the tribulations of the urban female as experienced by the author’s fluffy, beady-eyed “chicks.”
12 Audrey Hepburn, Elegant Spirit by Sean Hepburn Ferrer 13 5 (Simon & Schuster: $29.95) A son tells his actress mother’s story, from her youth in war-torn Holland to the heights of Hollywood.
13 Hollywood Then and Now by Rosemary Lord (Thunder Bay: 14 2 $17.98) More than 100 fascinating archival photos of the movie capital contrasted with images of the same scenes today.
14 Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf: 4 9 $26.95) The Nobel laureate describes his early life in Colombia and his parents and others who gave rise to his best-known characters.
15 Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea by Thomas Cahill (Doubleday: -- 1 $27.50) An exploration of ancient Greek life, thought and culture and its influence on civilization.
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