BESTSELLERS

*--* 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 20 Louvre curator’s killing leads to clues hidden in Leonardo’s paintings and a secret society with something to hide

2 The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger (Doubleday: 5 16 $21.95) A recent college grad puts up with a nightmare of a boss at a high-fashion magazine

3 Trading Up by Candace Bushnell (Hyperion: $24.95) Model 4 5 Janey Wilcox doesn’t let marriage to an entertainment exec get in the way as she hones her social-climbing skills

4 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown: $21.95) 6 59 A murdered girl tells the story of her grieving family still learning to cope, the killer and the detective who hunts him

5 Naked Empire by Terry Goodkind (Tor Books: $29.95) 3 2 Intrigue, violence and conflict face the beautiful Kahlan Amnell and husband Richard Rahl, the heroic Sword of Truth

6 The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time by Mark 14 3 Haddon (Doubleday: $22.95) After being falsely accused, the novel’s teen autistic narrator looks for the real murderer of a neighbor’s poodle

7 A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George (Bantam, Doubleday 10 2 Dell: $26.95) Deborah and Simon St. James try to clear her old friends in the death of an expatriate millionaire

8 Blindside by Catherine Coulter (Putnam: $25.95) Married -- 1 FBI agents are on the trail of a serial killer who targets math teachers until a friend’s son is kidnapped

9 To the Nines by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s Press: 2 4 $25.95) New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is on the trail of an Indian contract worker who has gone missing

10 Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt: $22) The 9 2 people of Sita Dulip’s Earth change not airplanes but planes of existence in this new collection of short stories

11 The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst (Little, Brown: -- 6 $21.95) A man tries to teach the family dog to talk after realizing the canine is the only witness to his wife’s fatal fall from a tree

12 Lake House by James Patterson (Little, Brown: $27.95) Six 8 9 children survive years of captivity and yearn to be with the couple who saved them in this sequel to “When the Wind Blows.”

13 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: -- 9 $27) A Greek family embraces the mid-century American dream, and a young girl takes a journey to womanhood

14 Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani (Random House: $24.95) -- 2 The daughter of a grocer must choose between the uptown life of a fashion apprentice and duty to family in 1950s New York

15 Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs (Scribner: $25) A forensic 12 4 anthropologist’s vacation to the North Carolina seashore is stopped cold when sets of remains turn up

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*--* SO. CAL. RATING Nonfiction LAST WEEK WEEKS ON LIST

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*--* 1 Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg (Putnam: $25.95) 1 4 Katharine Hepburn reveals more about her legendary life in this book postponed until after her death

2 Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster: 4 5 $30) A new look at the printer turned statesman, both a pragmatist and an ambitious self-promoter

3 Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday: 3 3 $26) The shadowy world of Mormon fundamentalism that led two men to kill their brother’s family on what they believed were direct orders from God

4 The Essential 55 by Ron Clark (Hyperion: $19.95) Rules 7 6 devised by an award-winning teacher to promote successful learning, manners and accountability in the classroom

5 The Kennedy Curse: Why America’s First Family Has Been 6 4 Haunted by Tragedy for 150 Years by Edward Klein (St. Martin’s Press: $24.95) A chronicle of the tragedies of a dynasty

6 Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Simon & 2 9 Schuster: $28 ) The senator and former first lady’s memoirs, from her courtship with Bill Clinton to her rocky years in the White House

7 Treason by Ann Coulter (Crown Forum: $26.95) The 5 6 conservative pundit contends that liberals have been on the wrong side of every foreign policy issue from the Cold War to the war on terrorism

8 The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren (Zondervan: 8 22 $19.99) How the principles of worship, community, discipleship, ministry and evangelism lead to a fulfilled life

9 Moneyball by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton: $24.95) How 14 12 Oakland A’s General manager Billy Beane’s use of statistics helped transform the major league castoffs into a winning franchise

10 The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (New World Library: 15 47 $21.95) How to improve relationships and encourage contentment by living in the present

11 Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House: $25.95) 9 35 How three men transformed a thoroughbred from also-ran to an American sports icon

12 Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott (Bloomsbury: -- 1 $14.95) A compendium of just about everything you always wanted to know

13 Charlie Wilson’s War by George Crile (Atlantic Monthly -- 1 Press: $26) How a Texas congressman helped orchestrate the secret arming of Afghanistan’s moujahedeen

14 It’s a Man’s World by Adam Parfrey (Feral House: $29.95) -- 1 Men’s adventure magazines shed light on post-World War II America

15 Isaac Newton by James Gleick (Pantheon: $22.95) The great -- 1 scientist’s breakthroughs are detailed in this overview of his life and times

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