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*--* SO. CAL. RATING Fiction LAST WEEK WEEKS ON LIST
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*--* 1 R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton (Putnam: $26.95) A 1 3 wealthy father is concerned when his daughter is released from prison only to fall into the arms of the man who put her there in the first place.
2 Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf: $24.95) A shady 2 2 Florida marine biologist thinks he’s offed his wife, but she’s only playing dead as she plots her revenge.
3 The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason 3 11 (Dial: $24) Four Princeton roommates use clues from a 15th century manuscript to find a buried Roman treasure.
4 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Doubleday: $24.95) A 5 71 Louvre curator’s killing leads to clues hidden in Leonardo’s paintings and a secret society with something to hide.
5 The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler (Putnam: 7 11 $23.95) Five women and a man plumb Austen’s novels, revealing their own foibles and reveries along the way.
6 The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom 6 44 (Hyperion: $19.95) An amusement park maintenance man faces his life, death and afterlife in this three-part parable.
7 Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown: $24.95) 4 4 Janitor and sometime private eye Easy Rawlins stumbles onto a string of homicides in South Central L.A. in the wake of the 1965 Watts riot.
8 Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes (Miramax: $23.95) Botoxed, 8 17 peeled and tanned to kill, Park Avenue princesses search for an ATM (rich boyfriend) or a P.H. (potential husband).
9 A Good Year by Peter Mayle (Knopf: $24) An ex-financier 15 7 makes a new life for himself after inheriting a dusty, down-at-the-heels wine-growing estate in Provence.
10 The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Penguin: -- 4 $24.95) In postwar Barcelona, the son of a bookstore owner tries to unearth the story of a long-dead novelist.
11 Sam’s Letters to Jennifer by James Patterson (Little, 9 4 Brown: $24.95) A grieving widow finds a cache of letters tracing her grandmother’s complicated life and is reunited with a dying friend.
12 Garden of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster: 14 2 $24.95) A mobster hit man goes undercover for the feds, who want him to assassinate one of Hitler’s henchmen in Nazi Berlin.
13 Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (Atria: $19.95) A Harvard 10 31 scholar uncovers a vendetta against the Roman Catholic Church by a secret society known as the Illuminati.
14 The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader (St. Martin’s: -- 3 $25.95) The ex-CIA hero of thrillers by the late Robert Ludlum returns to battle an assassin at a terrorism conference in Iceland.
15 I, Fatty by Jerry Stahl (Bloomsbury: $23.95) Roscoe -- 1 “Fatty” Arbuckle recounts how his acquittal on rape and murder charges doesn’t save his film career in this faux memoir.
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*--* SO. CAL. RATING Nonfiction LAST WEEK WEEKS ON LIST
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*--* 1 My Life by Bill Clinton (Knopf: $35) The former 1 6 president’s memoirs, from his Arkansas childhood through the highs and lows of his two terms in the White House.
2 Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris 2 9 (Little, Brown: $24.95) Popular humorist recounts childhood experiences with his delightfully dysfunctional family.
3 Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (Gotham: $17.50) A 4 15 British novelist and journalist offers her zero-tolerance approach to bad punctuation, drawn from her pioneering BBC series.
4 The Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson (Random House: $26.95) 3 4 The story of two deep-sea divers and their seven-year odyssey to trace the origins of a German U-boat hulk found off New Jersey.
5 Inside the Kingdom by Carmen bin Laden (Warner: $23.95) A 5 2 look at Saudi society, its treatment of women and the Bin Laden family by the woman once married to Osama’s older brother.
6 Losing America by Robert C. Byrd (W.W. Norton: $23.95) -- 1 The West Virginia senator demands a rollback of what he calls the “slow unraveling of the people’s liberties” in President Bush’s war on terror.
7 The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren (Zondervan: 6 73 $19.99) How the “God ordained” principles of worship, community, discipleship, ministry and evangelism bring fulfillment.
8 The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach (Broadway: 15 16 $19.95) A common-sense guide to retirement plans, automatic contributions, investments and financial planning.
9 Father Joe by Tony Hendra (Random House: $24.95) After an 14 8 adolescent tryst with a neighbor’s wife, Hendra develops a bond with a Benedictine monk who helps him through life’s struggles.
10 Worse Than Watergate by John W. Dean (Little, Brown: 7 16 $22.95) Former White House counsel argues that President Bush has done more damage to the nation than President Nixon or Watergate.
11 Vermeer in Bosnia by Lawrence Weschler (Pantheon: $25.95) -- 1 A New Yorker writer’s collection of essays on art and current events from the Balkans and Eastern Europe to Los Angeles.
12 Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (Penguin: $35) A look -- 7 at the first U.S. Treasury secretary, whose legacy in politics, statecraft and economics is greater than that of many presidents.
13 Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures by Kenneth -- 1 Cain et al. (Miramax: $25.95) A memoir of love, friendship and the betrayal of ideals among young adult volunteers in Cambodia.
14 Hippie by Barry Miles (Sterling: $24.95) A look at the -- 1 years of 1965 through 1971, from antiwar protests to the psychedelic movement, rock stars to counterculture heroes.
15 The Power of Intention by Wayne W. Dyer (Hay House: -- 17 $24.95) How to spark creativity and get the life you want by drawing on a field of energy that exists all around us.
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