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 2 36 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 3 9 (Hyperion: $19.95) An amusement park maintenance man faces his life, death and afterlife in this three-part parable.

3 The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson (Little Brown: -- 1 $27.95) Lawman Alex Cross investigates the disappearance of pretty women and uncovers a trade in sex slaves run by a Russian mobster.

4 Blood Canticle by Anne Rice (Knopf: $25.95) Vampire 4 5 Lestat tries to attain sainthood while rescuing a witch from certain death by making her immortal.

5 The Murder Room by P.D. James (Knopf: $25.95) A man -- 1 suffering from agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder copes with the vicissitudes of life.

6 Pompeii by Robert Harris (Random House: $24.95) A Roman -- 1 engineer rushing to repair an aqueduct near belching Mt. Vesuvius gets enmeshed in corruption and water embezzlement in AD 79.

7 Love by Toni Morrison (Knopf: $23.95) The late owner of a 11 4 resort hotel in a black seaside community lives on in the ambiguous recollections of those he left behind.

8 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (Farrar Straus & -- 1 Giroux: $24) A WWII war hero goes to a town near Hiroshima, where he befriends a teenage girl and her terminally ill brother.

9 The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin (Hyperion: 5 8 $19.95) A man suffering from agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder copes with the vicissitudes of life.

10 Bleachers by John Grisham (Doubleday: $19.95) An NFL -- 10 player returns home to join a vigil for his dying high school football coach and meets a woman he abandoned years before.

11 Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam: $26.95) Forensic 13 7 pathologist Kay Scarpetta is drawn into a series of gruesome murders in Louisiana bayou country.

12 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark -- 14 Haddon (Doubleday: $22.95) Falsely accused, an autistic teen looks for the real murderer of a neighbor’s poodle.

13 Old School by Tobias Wolff (Knopf: $22) A New England 15 3 prep school scholarship student with literary ambitions tries to win an audience with Ernest Hemingway.

14 The Hornet’s Nest by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster: $27) 10 2 Two Southern families caught up in the American Revolution as it was fought in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

15 Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon (Viking: $24.95) Father -- 3 Tim restores an old and battered nativity scene, and in the process deepens the spirit of Christmas in the tiny village of Mitford.

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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: 2 7 $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 1 15 (Dutton: $24.95) A heaping dose of subversive wit aimed at political leaders and pundits on the right and left.

3 Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf: 3 3 $26.95) The Nobel laureate describes his early life in Colombia and his parents and others who gave rise to his best-known characters.

4 The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren (Zondervan: 5 38 $19.99) How the “God-ordained” principles of worship, community, discipleship, ministry and evangelism bring fulfillment.

5 The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (New World Library: -- 61 $21.95) How to improve all of one’s relationships, encourage happiness and find contentment by living in the now.

6 The King of California by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman -- 4 (PublicAffairs: $30) The tale of J.G. Boswell and the agricultural empire he has built in California’s Central Valley.

7 A Royal Duty by Paul Burrell (Putnam: $25.95) Confidant 8 5 and major-domo of the late Princess Diana shares his perspective on her life and reveals their many private talks.

8 The World According to Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers 6 3 (Hyperion: $16.95) Some of the collected wisdom (and a few songs) from the late, beloved television personality.

9 Who’s Looking Out for You by Bill O’Reilly (Broadway: -- 8 $24.95) Talk-show host mixes outrage at corrupt politics, people and institutions with practical advice on how to identify whom to trust.

10 Hegemony of Survival by Noam Chomsky (Metropolitan: $22) -- 2 Distinguished MIT philosopher and linguist critiques America’s quest for global supremacy from the late 1950s to the present.

11 Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal (Yale: $22) How the most -- 1 impressive collection of political talent America has ever produced founded a nation amid great rivalries, petty failings and sheer ambition.

12 Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott (Bloomsbury: -- 8 $14.95) An eclectic compendium of facts, diagrams, symbols and just about everything you always wanted to know.

13 Broken Music by Sting (Bantam Books: $26) A memoir by the 10 4 British rock star of his working-class childhood and his ascent to the pinnacle of success with the band the Police.

14 Flyboys by James Bradley (Little Brown: $29.95) A history -- 7 of combat in the Pacific during World War II, centered on a group of U.S. Navy and Marine aviators captured and imprisoned by the Japanese.

15 The Pig Who Sang to the Moon by Jeffrey M. Masson -- 1 (Ballantine: $25.95) Exploring the emotional life of farm animals to argue against raising such creatures for food.

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