Southern California Rating:

FICTION

1. SINGLE & SINGLE by John le Carre (Scribner: $26) Corrupt liaisons between the new Russian states and the West and of the downfall of two families. Reviewed by Eugen Weber, Page 8.

Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 3

2. THE TESTAMENT by John Grisham (Doubleday: $27.95) The 10th richest man in the United States has died, and his greedy heirs are circling like hungry vultures.

Last Week: 1; Weeks on List: 7

3. BE COOL by Elmore Leonard (Delacorte: $24.95) Fresh from his movie success, Chili Palmer faces a pack of punks, thugs and other Tinsel Town toughies when he enters the music biz.

Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 6

4. THE POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins: $27.50) An evangelical Baptist missionary takes his wife and children to the Belgian Congo in 1959.

Last Week: 7; Weeks on List: 25

5. TARA ROAD by Maeve Binchy (Delacorte: $24.95) People facing heartbreak and disappointment are drawn to a Victorian home on a shabby Dublin street.

Last Week: 4; Weeks on List: 3

6. MOONLIGHT ON THE AVENUE OF FAITH by Gina B. Nahai (Harcourt Brace: $24.) A little girl’s search for her magical missing mother in a Tehran ghetto.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

7. WHILE I WAS GONE by Sue Miller (Alfred A. Knopf: $24) A married woman looks back on the summer of ’68 when a character from that time reappears in her life.

Last Week: 10; Weeks on List: 4

8. HUSH MONEY by Robert B. Parker (Putnam: $22.95) Spenser and Hawk help a professor with tenure trouble and a melodramatic damsel in distress.

Last Week: 5; Weeks on List: 2

9. VITTORIO THE VAMPIRE by Anne Rice (Alfred A. Knopf: $19.95) Another Vampire tale, set in Florence, in the orbit of the Medicis and the painter Fra Filippo Lippi.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

10. A MAN IN FULL by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: $28.95) The story of a real estate tycoon’s crash and burn and the sleaze who warm themselves by the fire.

Last Week: 14; Weeks on List: 20

11. THE TESSERACT by Alex Garland (Riverhead: $24.95) Lives of a sea-faring lad, a beach beauty, gangsters and street kids collide in steamy Manila.

Last Week: 11; Weeks on List: 2

12. A SUDDEN CHANGE OF HEART by Barbara Taylor Bradford (Doubleday: $24) A story of child abuse, terminal cancer, bisexuality, divorce, art theft and the Holocaust.

Last Week: 12; Weeks on List: 5

13. AMSTERDAM by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday: $21) A journalist, composer and politician ease feelings of emptiness by sabotaging one another’s careers.

Last Week: 13; Weeks on List: 14

14. WHEN I FALL IN LOVE by Iris Rainer Dart (William Morrow: $25) A literary soap opera with a TV comedy writer-heroine and a melodramatic climax.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

15. RIVER’S END by Nora Roberts (Putnam: $23.95) Haunted by her mother’s murder, a woman is helped by a loving man to face her fears--and the killer, just released from prison.

Last Week: 8; Weeks on List: 3

NONFICTION

1. ALL TOO HUMAN by George Stephanopoulos (Little, Brown: $27.95) Behind the scenes in the Oval Office with one of President Clinton’s best and brightest.

Last Week: 1; Weeks on List: 2

2. MONICA’S STORY by Andrew Morton (St. Martin’s Press: $24.95) Monica Lewinsky’s account of the real nature of her relationship with President Clinton.

Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 3

3. IN THE GARDEN OF OUR DREAMS by Shirlee T. Haizlip and Harold C. Haizlip (Kodansha: $24) Memoirs of a marriage; the shocking tale of a perfectly happy couple.

Last Week: 14; Weeks on List: 10

4. THE COURAGE TO BE RICH by Suze Orman (Riverhead: $24.95) Attention, fraidy-cats: Dump that savings account earning 2% and look for better investments.

Last Week: 5; Weeks on List: 2

5. THE GREATEST GENERATION by Tom Brokaw (Random House: $24.95) TV anchor tells the stories of the generation that came of age during the Depression and World War II.

Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 15

6. TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by Mitch Albom (Doubleday: $19.95) A sportswriter’s empowering story about his weekly visits to see an older dying friend.

Last Week: 4; Weeks on List: 64

7. THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Brian Greene (W.W. Norton: $27.95) Is the universe a symphony played by strings? String theory for the general public.

Last Week: 11; Weeks on List: 5

8. TRAVELING MERCIES by Anne Lamott (Pantheon: $23) The growth of Lamott’s beliefs and how they helped her overcome grief, alcoholism and bad hair days.

Last Week: 12; Weeks on List: 5

9. ELEGY FOR IRIS by John Bayley (St. Martin’s: $22.95) A portrait of the love affair, and marriage, of novelists Iris Murdoch and John Bayley.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 4

10. THE NINE STEPS TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM by Suze Orman (Crown: $23) Practical tips for avoiding stress, making good savings plans and managing money.

Last Week: 10; Weeks on List: 41

11. THE CENTURY by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster (Doubleday: $60) The story of our last 100 years; a companion to an upcoming ABC special.

Last Week: 8; Weeks on List: 15

12. THE GROSS by Peter Bart (St. Martin’s: $24.95) A former studio exec looks at summer ‘98’s blockbusters and the need for higher artistic standards.Reviewed by Corie Brown, Page 4.

Last Week: 7; Weeks on List: 3

13. PERFECT MURDER, PERFECT TOWN by Lawrence Schiller (HarperCollins: $26) The flawed investigation of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey’s murder.

Last Week: 13; Weeks on List: 3

14. THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN by Simon Winchester (HarperCollins: $22) The editor of the Oxford English Dictionary was helped by a brilliant mental patient.

Last Week: 6; Weeks on List: 26

15. BLIND MAN’S BLUFF by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew (PublicAffairs: $25) Revelations about the secret world of American submarine espionage.

Last Week: 15; Weeks on List: 14

Paperbacks

FICTION

1. THE READER by Bernard Schlink (Vintage: $11) A boyhood fling with an older woman and its aftermath.

2. MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA by Arthur Golden (Vintage: $14) The life and loves of a teahouse entertainer in Kyoto.

3. CHARMING BILLY by Alice McDermott (Delta: $12.95) A family reflects on the life of a deceased relative.

4. MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE by Nicholas Sparks (Warner: $6.99) A woman seeks the author of a mysterious message.

5. AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST by Iain Pears (Berkley: $7.99) A 17th century hunt for an Oxford don’s killer.

6. THE NOTEBOOK by Nicholas Sparks (Warner: $5.99) An octogenarian conquers illness with old memories of love.

7. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL by James Ellroy (Warner: $12.99) Three cops navigate the sordid wasteland of 1950s L.A.

8. STONES FOR IBARRA by Harriet Doerr (Penguin: $12.95) A couple move to Mexico for the husband’s final years.

9. JEWEL by Bret Lott (Pocket: $14) A first-person epic of one woman’s duel with God.

10. THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN by Jacquelyn Mitchard (Signet: $7.50) Guilt shatters a family after a child is kidnapped.

NONFICTION

1. CRIME WAVE by James Ellroy (Vintage: $12) Essays, plus two stories, about L.A.’s seamy, undead past.

2. MY DARK PLACES by James Ellroy (Vintage: $14) The film noir circumstances surrounding his mother’s murder.

3. TENDER AT THE BONE by Ruth Reichl (Broadway: $13) A food expert in the making.

4. BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott (Anchor: $12.95) The secrets of a writer, delivered with humor and generosity.

5. INTO THIN AIR by Jon Krakauer (Anchor Books: $7.99) Risk and recklessness on a deadly Mt. Everest expedition.

6. OCTOBER SKY by Homer Hickam (Dell: $6.99) A boy from Coalwood, W. Va., becomes a NASA scientist.

7. SLAVES IN THE FAMILY by Edward Ball (Vintage: $15.95) Intertwined lives of black and white in the South.

8. PARIS IN THE FIFTIES by Stanley Karnow (Vintage: $14) A journalist’s apprenticeship in postwar Paris.

9. THE TIGER IN THE GRASS by Harriet Doerr (Penguin: $10.95) Essays on California, Mexico, motherhood and marriage.

10. HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION by Thomas Cahill (Anchor: $12) What monks did after Rome’s fall.

*

Rankings are based on a Times poll of Southland bookstores.