August 6, 2000

FICTION

Southern California Rating: 1

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 4

HOT SIX by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s: $24.95) Arms dealers, thugs and Grandma get in the way of New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum’s efforts to find a vanished colleague.

*

Southern California Rating: 2

Last Week: 1

Weeks on List: 2

IN THE NAME OF SALOME by Julia Alvarez (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: $23.95) A professor at Vassar learns the story of her mother, the Dominican Republic’s most celebrated poet.

*

Southern California Rating: 3

Last Week: 2

Weeks on List: 4

HOT SPRINGS by Stephen Hunter (Simon & Schuster: $25) World War II veteran Earl Swagger is hired to clean up an Arkansas town controlled by an oddball gangster.

*

Southern California Rating: 4

Last Week: 5

Weeks on List: 13

ANIL’S GHOST by Michael Ondaatje (Alfred A. Knopf: $25) A forensic anthropologist arrives in Ceylon to investigate the source of the organized campaign of murder engulfing the island.

*

Southern California Rating: 5

Last Week: 4

Weeks on List: 13

WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith (Random House: $24.95) The intertwined stories of two North London families capture an empire’s worth of cultural identity, history and hope.

*

Southern California Rating: 6

Last Week: 10

Weeks on List: 3

OMERTA by Mario Puzo (Random House: $25.95) A family on the brink of legitimacy in a world of criminals finds itself caught in the middle of one last Mafia war.

*

Southern California Rating: 7

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 7

THE INDWELLING by Tim F. Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (Tyndale: $22.95) In Chapter Seven of the “Left Behind” series, the members of Tribulation Force face both judgment and salvation.

*

Southern California Rating: 8

Last Week: 3

Weeks on List: 3

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE by Ridley Pearson (Hyperion: $23.95) As the blue flu fells most of the Seattle Police Department, a police lieutenant must deal with an increasing crime wave.

*

Southern California Rating: 9

Last Week: 8

Weeks on List: 12

THE HUMAN STAIN by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin: $26) The chronicle of an academic scandal and its impact on the aging faculty dean at its center and on his friend, Nathan Zuckerman.

*

Southern California Rating: 10

Last Week: 14

Weeks on List: 9

DEMOLITION ANGEL by Robert Crais (Doubleday: $24.95) Carol Starkey must confront some old demons as she looks into the death by detonation of a former colleague.

*

Southern California Rating: 11

Last Week: 15

Weeks on List: 14

WAITING by Ha Jin (Pantheon: $24) An absurd loophole in Chinese law allows a pair of star-crossed lovers to be united after a long separation.

*

Southern California Rating: 12

Last Week: 12

Weeks on List: 2

*

JULIE AND ROMEO by Jeanne Ray (Harmony Books: $21) Romeo Cacciamani and Julie Roseman, rival florists in Boston, fall in love late in life, in spite of their families’ rivalry.

*

Southern California Rating: 13

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 6

RAVELSTEIN by Saul Bellow (Viking: $24.95) A writer chronicles the life of his dying professor friend, exposing both of their vices and virtues in the process.

*

Southern California Rating: 14

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 1

AN INVISIBLE SIGN OF MY OWN by Aimee Bender (Doubleday: $22.95) A second-grade math teacher finds her obsession with control threatened by the affections of her students and a colleague.

*

Southern California Rating: 15

Last Week: 13

Weeks on List: 4

BECOMING MADAME MAO by Anchee Min (Houghton Mifflin: $25) Portrait of a Chinese revolutionary, who fled family and foot-binding for the Shanghai theater and the arms of Mao Tse-tung.

NONFICTION

Southern California Rating: 1

Last Week: 1

Weeks on List: 22

WHO MOVED MY CHEESE? by Spencer Johnson (Putnam: $19.95) This co-author of “The One Minute Manager” uses the parable of mice in a maze to show people how to manage change.

*

Southern California Rating: 2

Last Week: 3

Weeks on List: 10

ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY by David Sedaris (Little, Brown: $22.95) Wisecracking essays on life with his quirky father and the cultural confusion and humiliation of learning French in Paris.

*

Southern California Rating: 3

Last Week: 10

Weeks on List: 15

TEN THINGS I WISH I’D KNOWN BEFORE I WENT INTO THE REAL WORLD by Maria Shriver (Warner: $19.95) Notes from life’s trenches, expanded from a commencement speech.

*

Southern California Rating: 4

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 130

TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by Mitch Albom (Doubleday: $19.95) A sportswriter’s empowering story about his weekly visits to see an older dying friend.

*

Southern California Rating: 5

Last Week: 4

Weeks on List: 2

THE DAY JOHN DIED by Christopher Andersen (William Morrow: $26) A year after the crash, Andersen recreates the events leading up to the death of John F. Kennedy Jr.

*

Southern California Rating: 6

Last Week: 2

Weeks on List: 5

THE CHIEF by David Nasaw (Houghton Mifflin: $35) Newly discovered letters augment this retelling of the life of media mogul extraordinaire William Randolph Hearst.

*

Southern California Rating: 7

Last Week: 12

Weeks on List: 18

WHICH LIE DID I TELL? by William Goldman (Pantheon: $26.95) Further adventures in the screen trade from a veteran screenwriter whose work includes “All the President’s Men.”

*

Southern California Rating: 8

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 1

AMERICAN RHAPSODY by Joe Eszterhas (Alfred A. Knopf: $25.95) Speedy ruminations on our national id accompanied by a techno-rave drumbeat of paranoia and sleaze.

*

Southern California Rating: 9

Last Week: 5

Weeks on List: 9

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking: $24.95) Life and death aboard the Nantucket whaler Essex, which was sunk by a sperm whale in 1821.

*

Southern California Rating: 10

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 1

PAPAL SIN by Garry Wills (Doubleday: $25) Historian Wills charges the Vatican with dishonesty and challenges the existence of the papacy. Reviewed by Martin Gardner, Page 4.

*

Southern California Rating: 11

Last Week: 7

Weeks on List: 24

A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS by Dave Eggers (Simon & Schuster: $23) Memoir of a twentysomething slacker, who must bring up his baby brother when their parents die of cancer.

*

Southern California Rating: 12

Last Week: 13

Weeks on List: 10

FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE by Jacques Barzun (HarperCollins: $36) A magnum opus from the eminent historian on the rise and fall of Western culture over the last 500 years.

*

Southern California Rating: 13

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 4

DON’T MAKE ME STOP THIS CAR! by Al Roker (Scribner: $24) Essays on the adventures of fatherhood by the weatherman of NBC’s “Today” show.

*

Southern California Rating: 14

Last Week: --

Weeks on List: 2

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE BIKE by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins (Putnam: $24.95) Triumph in the life of a champion cyclist, from overcoming cancer to winning the Tour de France.

*

Southern California Rating: 15

Last Week: 14

Weeks on List: 18

THE GREATEST GENERATION SPEAKS by Tom Brokaw (Random House: $19.95) More stories of American heroism during the ‘30s and ‘40s in this sequel to “The Greatest Generation.”1418

PAPERBACKS

FICTION

Southern California Ranking: 1

THE POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperPerennial: $14) A missionary family’s ordeals.

*

Southern California Ranking: 2

THE GIRLS’ GUIDE TO HUNTING AND FISHING by Melissa Bank (Penguin: $12.95) A young girl’s look for lasting love.

*

Southern California Ranking: 3

THE HOURS by Michael Cunningham (Picador USA: $13) Three stories built around Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.”

*

Southern California Ranking: 4

TEARS OF THE MOON by Nora Roberts (Berkley: $7.99) A woman uses Irish magic to make her romantic dreams come true.

*

Southern California Ranking: 5

THE RED TENT by Anita Diamant (Picador USA: $14) The blossoming of Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter, in Genesis.

*

Southern California Ranking: 6

FLEUR DE LEIGH’S LIFE OF CRIME by Diane Leslie (Scribner: $12) A poor little rich girl and her L.A. childhood.

*

Southern California Ranking: 7

DANGEROUS KISS by Jackie Collins (Pocket: $7.99) Lucky Santangelo plots revenge against a relative’s killer.

*

Southern California Ranking: 8

INTERPRETER OF MALADIES by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner: $12) Indian heritage colors the lives of people coping with loss.

*

Southern California Ranking: 9

HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG by Andre Dubus III (Vintage: $14) Two families clash over an auctioned house in this tragic tale.

*

Southern California Ranking: 10

GRANNY DAN by Danielle Steel (Dell: $7.50) A woman learns of her grandmother’s stormy past in Imperial Russia.

NONFICTION

Southern California Ranking: 1

THE PERFECT STORM by Sebastian Junger (HarperPaperback: $13) Fishermen lost in a furious ocean storm in ’91.

*

Southern California Ranking: 2

THE HUNGRY OCEAN by Linda Greenlaw (Hyperion: $14) Life on the Hannah Boden with “The Perfect Storm’s” Greenlaw.

*

Southern California Ranking: 3

GIRL, INTERRUPTED by Susanna Kaysen (Vintage: $12) A memoir of life in a psychiatric institute in 1967.

*

Southern California Ranking: 4

THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN by Simon Winchester (HarperPerennial: $13) A madman with a flair for words.

*

Southern California Ranking: 5

THE SEAT OF THE SOUL by Gary Zukav (Fireside: $13) The inward transformation of the human soul.

*

Southern California Ranking: 6

THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE by Thomas Friedman (Anchor: $15) Globalization and its discontents since the Cold War.

*

Southern California Ranking: 7

THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht (Chronicle: $14.95) S-O-S!

*

Southern California Ranking: 8

LAKER GLORY by Tim Kawakami (Los Angeles Times Books: $18.95) Bling, bling: A look at the 1999-2000 season.

*

Southern California Ranking: 9

THE ORCHID THIEF by Susan Orlean (Ballantine: $14) Centuries of theft, hatred and greed over a delicate flower.

*

Southern California Ranking: 10

RICH DAD, POOR DAD by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter (Techpress: $15.95) Fiscal parenting.

*

Rankings are based on a Times poll of Southland bookstores.