FICTION

1 WINTER SOLSTICE by Rosamunde Pilcher (St. Martin’s Press: $27.95) On the shortest day of the year, five people find themselves in a house in Northern Scotland learning to live with loss.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

2 PURPLE CANE ROAD by James Lee Burke (Bantam: $24.95) While helping out an old friend, a man discovers that his mother was murdered by cops 30 years ago .

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

3 ECHO PARK by Steve Scott (San Diego Writers’ Monthly Press: $24) Eccentric lives intersect in a multistory house overlooking the famous park.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

4 OMERTA by Mario Puzo (Random House: $25.95) A family on the brink of legitimacy finds itself caught in the middle of one last Mafia war. Reviewed by Eugen Weber, Page 9.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 4

5 GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING by Tracy Chevalier (Dutton: $21.95) Who was the girl in Vermeer’s famous painting? A fictionalized life of one of art’s most enigmatic heroines.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 9

6 BEE SEASON by Myla Goldberg (Doubleday: $22.95) A 9-year-old girl’s sudden success in spelling bees divides her family and causes each member to reassess the meaning of love and relationships.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 2

7 MOVE TO STRIKE by Perri O’Shaughnessy (Delacorte: $23.95) A lawyer must navigate a tangled family web in order to defend a 16-year-old girl accused of murdering her uncle.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

8 ANIL’S GHOST by Michael Ondaatje (Alfred A. Knopf: $25) A forensic anthropologist arrives in Ceylon to investigate the source of the organized campaign of murder engulfing the island.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 14

9 LIAR’S GAME by Eric Jerome Dickey (Dutton: $23.95) In order for their new relationship to blossom, a thirtysomething African American couple must be honest about the details of their past.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 2

10 WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith (Random House: $24.95) Intertwined stories of two North London families reflect an empire’s worth of cultural identity, history and hope.

Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 15

11 BECOMING MADAME MAO by Anchee Min (Houghton Mifflin: $25) Portrait of a Chinese revolutionary, who fled family and foot-binding for the Shanghai theater and the arms of Mao Tse-tung.

Last Week: 4; Weeks on List: 6

12 WAITING by Ha Jin (Pantheon: $24) An absurd loophole in Chinese law allows a pair of star-crossed lovers to be united after a long separation.

Last Week: 14; Weeks on List: 16

13 THE HUMAN STAIN by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin: $26) The chronicle of an academic scandal and its impact on the aging faculty dean at its center and on his friend, Nathan Zuckerman.

Last Week: 11; Weeks on List: 14

14 AN INVISIBLE SIGN OF MY OWN by Aimee Bender (Doubleday: $22.95) A second-grade math teacher finds her obsession with control threatened by the affections of her students and a colleague.

Last Week: 12; Weeks on List: 3

15 DISGRACE by J.M. Coetzee (Viking: $23.95) Fired from academe, a South African professor pursues the simple life on his daughter’s farm but finds danger in the post-apartheid world.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 22

NONFICTION

1 BRAVE JOURNEYS by David Mixner and Dennis Bailey (Bantam: $24.95) Profiles in gay and lesbian courage, of seven men and women who worked to transform the political and societal landscape.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

2 ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY by David Sedaris (Little, Brown: $22.95) Wisecracking essays on life with dad and the confusion and humiliation of learning French in Paris.

Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 12

3 PAD by Matt Maranian (Chronicle Books: $24.95) Hipster housing: From lava lamps to hammocks as couches, a guide to decorating and redecorating in swanky style.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

WHO MOVED MY CHEESE? by Spencer Johnson (Putnam: $19.95) This co-author of “The One Minute Manager” uses the parable of mice in a maze to show people how to manage change.--

Last Week: 23; Weeks on List:

5 AMERICAN RHAPSODY by Joe Eszterhas (Alfred A. Knopf: $25.95) Speedy ruminations on our national id accompanied by a techno-rave drumbeat of paranoia and sleaze.

Last Week: 11 Weeks on List:3

6 IT’S NOT ABOUT THE BIKE by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins (Putnam: $24.95) Triumph in the life of a champion cyclist, from overcoming cancer to winning the Tour de France.

Last Week: --Weeks on List: 3

7 KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL by Anthony Bourdain (Bloomsbury: $24.95) Tools of the culinary trade and tales from the trenches by the acclaimed chef of Les Halles in New York. --2

Last Week: -- Weeks on List: 2

8 FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE by Jacques Barzun (HarperCollins: $36) A magnum opus from the eminent historian on the rise and fall of Western culture over the last 500 years.

Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 12

9 A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS by Dave Eggers (Simon & Schuster: $23) Memoir of a twentysomething slacker, who must bring up his baby brother when their parents die of cancer.

Last Week: 14; Weeks on List: 26

10 CHAVEZ RAVINE by Don Normark (Chronicle: $29.95) Photographs of a forgotten neighborhood in the L.A. hills that was uprooted in 1950 to build Dodger Stadium.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 8

11 TEN THINGS I WISH I’D KNOWN BEFORE I WENT INTO THE REAL WORLD by Maria Shriver (Warner: $19.95) Notes from life’s trenches, expanded from a commencement speech.

Last Week: 11; Weeks on List: 7

12 TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by Mitch Albom (Doubleday: $19.95) A sportswriter’s story of the life lessons he received during weekly visits to an older dying friend.

Last Week: 91; Weeks on List: 32

13 STEPPING UP TO POWER by Harriett Woods (Westview Press: $25) A former president of the National Women’s Political Caucus reflects on the political journey of America’s women.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 2

14 IN THE HEART OF THE SEA by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking: $24.95) Life and death aboard the Nantucket whaler Essex, which was sunk by a sperm whale in 1821.

Last Week: 5; Weeks on List: 11

15 THE CHIEF by David Nasaw (Houghton Mifflin: $35) Newly discovered letters augment this retelling of the life of media mogul extraordinaire William Randolph Hearst.

Last Week--: ; Weeks on List: 6

Paperbacks / FICTION

1 BLACK NOTICE by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam: $25.95) Kay Scarpetta hunts for information in a Paris morgue.

2 THE RED TENT by Anita Diamant (Picador USA: $14) The blossoming of Dinah, Jacob’s only

daughter, in Genesis.

3 THE POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperPerennial: $14) A missionary family’s

ordeals.

4 THE HOURS by Michael Cunningham (Picador USA: $13) Three stories built on Virginia Woolf’s

novel “Mrs. Dalloway.”

5 INTERPRETER OF MALADIES by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner: $12) Indian customs color the lives of

people coping with loss.

6 WHITE OLEANDER by Janet Fitch (Back Bay Books: $13.95) Her mother in jail, a teenage girl

survives in L.A. foster homes.

7 DARK LADY by Richard North Patterson (Ballantine: $7.99) Murder in a cold Midwestern town.

8 THE GIRLS’ GUIDE TO HUNTING AND FISHING by Melissa Bank (Penguin: $12.95) A young girl’s hunt for lasting love.

9 THE SAVING GRACES by Patricia Gaffney (HarperCollins: $6.99) Four friends share life with one another.

10 TARA ROAD by Maeve Binchy (Dell: $7.99) Heartbreak and disappointment along a Dublin side street.

PAPERBACKS / NONFICTION

1 RICH DAD, POOR DAD by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter (Techpress: $15.95) Fiscal parenting.

2 THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht (Chronicle: $14.95) S-O-S!

3 THE PERFECT STORM by Sebastian Junger (HarperPaperback: $13) Fishermen lost in a furious ocean storm in ’91.

4 THE BIG TITLE by Barry Rubinstein and Lyle M. Spencer (Broadway Books: $19.95) The NBA finals in retrospect.

5 GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL by Jared Diamond (W.W. Norton: $14.95) The part played by this triad in history.

6 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE

UNITED STATES (Bantam: $2.95)

7 LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME by James W. Loewen (Touchstone: $14) History textbooks that “make students stupid.”

8 THE SEAT OF THE SOUL by Gary Zukav (Fireside: $13) Teaching readers to rethink the mind-body connection.

9 THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN by Simon Winchester (HarperPerennial: $13) A madman with a flair for words.

10 NO ONE LEFT TO LIE TO by Christopher Hitchens (Verso: $10) Clinton Agonistes.

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Rankings are based on a Times poll of Southland bookstores.