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 39 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 12 (Hyperion: $19.95) An amusement park maintenance man faces his life, death and afterlife in this three-part parable.

3 Trojan Odyssey by Clive Cussler (Putnam: $27.95) Dirk 3 3 Pitt rushes to rescue his undersea exploring twins as a mega-hurricane bears down on the Caribbean and a luxury floating hotel.

4 The Murder Room by P.D. James (Knopf: $25.95) Adam 7 4 Dalgliesh investigates the murder of an unpopular museum trustee that echoes a famous homicide depicted in the museum’s Murder Room.

5 The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson (Little, Brown: 4 4 $27.95) Lawman Alex Cross investigates the disappearance of pretty women and uncovers a sex slave ring run by a Russian mobster.

6 The Hornet’s Nest by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster: $27) 9 4 Two Southern families caught up in the American Revolution as it was fought in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

7 Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz (Bantam: $26.95) A short-order -- 1 cook talks to ghosts and senses the presence of malevolent spirits who threaten his small desert town.

8 Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (Atria: $17.95) A Harvard -- 4 scholar uncovers a vendetta against the Catholic Church by a secret society.

9 The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin (Hyperion: 8 11 $19.95) A man suffering from agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder copes with the vicissitudes of life.

10 Pompeii by Robert Harris (Random House: $24.95) An 13 4 engineer repairing an aqueduct near Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79 notes ominous signs of its imminent eruption.

11 Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King (Donald 6 6 M. Grant/Scribner: $35) Roland and friends fight to save the Dark Tower in an afflicted farm community and Midtown Manhattan.

12 Still Holding by Bruce Wagner (Simon & Schuster: $25) In -- 2 the third book of Wagner’s cellphone trilogy, Hollywood’s players, stars and wannabes connect and disconnect.

13 The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (Houghton Mifflin: $24) An -- 11 immigrant Bengali couple and their son, named for the writer Nikolai Gogol, experience cultural jolts in America.

14 Old School by Tobias Wolff (Knopf: $22) A New England 5 6 prep school scholarship student with literary ambitions tries to win an audience with Ernest Hemingway.

15 Bleachers by John Grisham (Doubleday: $19.95) An NFL 10 13 player returns home to join a vigil for his dying high school football coach and meets a woman he abandoned years before.

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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 10 $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 18 (Dutton: $24.95) A heaping dose of subversive wit aimed at political leaders and pundits on the right and left.

3 Who’s Looking Out for You? by Bill O’Reilly (Broadway: 4 11 $24.95) Talk-show host mixes outrage at corrupt politics, people and institutions with advice on how to identify whom to trust.

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

5 Flyboys by James Bradley (Little, Brown: $29.95) A 9 10 history of combat in the Pacific during World War II, centered on a group of U.S. Navy and Marine aviators captured by the Japanese.

6 The Present by Spencer Johnson (Doubleday: $19.95) Advice -- 1 on attaining happiness and success by learning from the past, living in the here-and-now and planning for the future.

7 The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren (Zondervan: 5 41 $19.99) How the “God-ordained” principles of worship, community, discipleship, ministry and evangelism bring fulfillment.

8 Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott (Bloomsbury: 3 11 $14.95) An eclectic compendium of facts, diagrams, symbols and just about everything you always wanted to know.

9 Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf: 8 6 $26.95) The Nobel laureate describes his early life in Colombia and his parents and others who gave rise to his best-known characters.

10 Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky (Metropolitan: $22) -- 3 A critique of America’s quest for global supremacy from the 1950s to the present, by the MIT professor of philosophy and linguistics.

11 Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking: $30) A -- 2 chronicle of the Great United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by Lt. Charles Wilkes, and its mid-19th century circumnavigation of the globe.

12 I Am What I Ate ... and I’m Frightened! by Bill Cosby 10 2 (HarperEntertainment: $19.95) The comedian, having turned 65, contemplates the perils of aging.

13 Inventing a Nation by Gore Vidal (Yale: $22) The -- 2 rivalries, failings and sheer ambition of our Founding Fathers, the most impressive collection of political talent that America has ever produced.

14 Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas (Villard: $21.95) A -- 1 memoir of growing up in Newport Beach by an Iranian woman who arrived in this country at age 7.

15 The King of California by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman 11 7 (PublicAffairs: $30) The tale of J.G. Boswell and the agricultural empire he built in California’s Central Valley.

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