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 37 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 10 (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: 3 2 $27.95) Lawman Alex Cross investigates the disappearance of pretty women and uncovers a trade in sex slaves run by a Russian mobster.

4 The Murder Room by P.D. James (Knopf: $25.95) Adam 5 2 Dalgliesh investigates an unpopular museum trustee’s killing that echoes a famous homicide depicted in the museum’s Murder Room.

5 Trojan Odyssey by Clive Cussler (Putnam: 27.95) Dirk Pitt -- 1 rushes to rescue his undersea exploring twins as a mega-hurricane bears down on the Caribbean and a luxury floating hotel.

6 The Conspiracy Club by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine: -- 1 $26.95) A psychologist suspected in the slayings of his lover and other women tries to find their cunning psychopath killer.

7 Pompeii by Robert Harris (Random House: $24.95) A Roman 6 2 engineer working to repair an aqueduct near belching Mt. Vesuvius gets enmeshed in corruption and water embezzlement in AD 79.

8 Bleachers by John Grisham (Doubleday: $19.95) An NFL 10 11 player returns home to join a vigil for his dying high school football coach and meets a woman he abandoned years before.

9 Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King (Donald -- 4 M. Grant/Scribner: $35) Roland and friends fight to save the Dark Tower in an afflicted farm community and Midtown Manhattan.

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

11 Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam: $26.95) Forensic 11 8 pathologist Kay Scarpetta is drawn into a series of gruesome murders in Louisiana bayou country.

12 Old School by Tobias Wolff (Knopf: $22) A New England 13 4 prep school scholarship student with literary ambitions tries to win an audience with Ernest Hemingway.

13 Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon (Viking: $24.95) Father 15 4 Tim restores an old and battered nativity scene, and in the process deepens the spirit of Christmas in the tiny village of Mitford.

14 The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (Houghton Mifflin: $24) A -- 10 Bengali couple and son, named for the Russian writer Gogol, experience cultural jolts after leaving Calcutta for America.

15 The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (Farrar Straus & 8 2 Giroux: $24) A WWII war hero goes to a town near Hiroshima, where he befriends a teenage girl and her terminally ill brother.

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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 8 $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 16 (Dutton: $24.95) A heaping dose of subversive wit aimed at political leaders and pundits on the right and left.

3 The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (New World Library: 5 62 $21.95) How to improve all of one’s relationships, encourage happiness and find contentment by living in the now.

4 Flyboys by James Bradley (Little Brown: $29.95) A history 14 8 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.

5 The World According to Mister Rogers by Fred Rogers 8 4 (Hyperion: $16.95) Some of the collected wisdom (and a few songs) from the late, beloved television personality.

6 The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren (Zondervan: 4 39 $19.99) How the “God-ordained” principles of worship, community, discipleship, ministry and evangelism bring fulfillment.

7 Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott (Bloomsbury: 12 9 $14.95) An eclectic compendium of facts, diagrams, symbols and just about everything you always wanted to know.

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

9 The King of California by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman 6 5 (PublicAffairs: $30) The tale of J.G. Boswell and the agricultural empire he has built in California’s Central Valley.

10 Audrey Hepburn, Elegant Spirit by Sean Hepburn Ferrer -- 2 (Simon & Schuster: $29.95) A son tells his actress mother’s story from her youth in war-torn Holland to the heights of Hollywood.

11 Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf: 3 4 $26.95) The Nobel laureate describes his early life in Colombia and his parents and others who gave rise to his best-known characters.

12 I’ll Be Damned If I’ll Die in Oakland by Al Martinez -- 1 (Thomas Dunne Books: $23.95) A “sort-of” memoir of the soul-satisfying benefits of a lifetime of traveling the globe.

13 Hope Dies Last by Studs Terkel (New Press: $25.95) A -- 1 collection of oral histories exploring what moves people to hang on to hope in tough times and fight for the just cause.

14 Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking: $27.95) A -- 1 chronicle of America’s greatest sea adventure of the 19th century and the discoveries of the flotilla commanded by Lt. Charles Wilkes.

15 Goya by Robert Hughes (Knopf: $40) A biography of the -- 2 great Spanish painter and an examination of his mastery in depicting trauma, conflict, suffering and humanity’s endless capacity for cruelty.

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