FICTION

1 THE BEAR AND THE DRAGON by Tom Clancy (Putnam: $28.95) CIA warrior and U.S. president Jack Ryan faces brewing trouble in Russia and China and a global struggle for Siberian oil.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

2 A PERMANENT TWILIGHT by Chuck Freadhoff (HarperCollins: $25) Reporter and hard-boiled idealist Johnny Rose probes L.A.’s underworld to find out who killed his runaway niece.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

3 WINTER SOLSTICE by Rosamunde Pilcher (St. Martin’s Press: $27.95) On the shortest day of the year, five people find themselves in a house in Northern Scotland learning to live with loss.

Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 4

4 FOUR BLONDES by Candace Bushnell (Atlantic Monthly: $24) Interconnected stories from the “Sex and the City” author about four women caught up in the glitz and glamour of New York.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

5 A DENSITY OF SOULS by Christopher Rice (Talk Miramax: $23.95) Coming of age and the cruelties of a New Orleans prep school, from the vampire author’s son.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

6 DUST TO DUST by Tami Hoag (BDD: $25.95) Dirty cops, cover-ups and a luckless detective’s efforts to find the truth behind a colleague’s supposed suicide.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

7 PURPLE CANE ROAD by James Lee Burke (Bantam: $24.95) While helping out an old friend, a man discovers that his mother was murdered by cops 30 years ago .

Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 4

8 THE RIVER KING by Alice Hoffman (Putnam: $23.95) Love, heartbreak and mystery among the students and faculty of a private school in a sleepy Massachusetts town.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

9 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.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 5

10 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.

Last Week: 8; Weeks on List: 9

11 THE JAMES DEAN AFFAIR by Robert S. Levinson (Forge: $24.95) When a James Dean look-alike kills a soap opera star, amateur sleuths Neil Gulliver and Stevie Marriner decide to investigate.

Last Week: 1; Weeks on List: 2

12 THE INDWELLING by Tim F. Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (Tyndale: $22.95) The “Left Behind” series continues as, in the years before the Second Coming, the Tribulation Force fights to stay alive.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 10

13 STALKER by Faye Kellerman (William Morrow: $25) Cynthia Decker, a young L.A. cop, wonders whether she’s being hazed by her colleagues or pursued by more violent offenders.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 2

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

Last Week: 6; Weeks on List: 18

15 GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING by Tracy Chevalier (Dutton: $21.95) Who was the girl in Vermeer’s famous painting? A fictionalized life of one of art’s most enigmatic heroines.

Last Week: 12; Weeks on List: 10

NONFICTION

1 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.

Last Week: 1; Weeks on List: 26

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

Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 15

3 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.

Last Week: 9; Weeks on List: 6

4 THE GREATEST GENERATION by Tom Brokaw (Random House: $24.95) TV anchor tells the stories of the generation that came of age during the Depression and World War II.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 63

5 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.

Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 6

6 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.

Last Week: 5; Weeks on List: 20

7 TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by Mitch Albom (Doubleday: $19.95) A sportswriter’s story of the life lessons he received during weekly visits to an older dying friend.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 134

8 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.

Last Week: 7; Weeks on List: 29

9 NOTHING LIKE IT IN THE WORLD by Stephen Ambrose (Simon & Schuster: $28) The historian looks at the building of the transatlantic railroad and its impact on the growth of the nation.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

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.

Last Week: 12; Weeks on List: 15

11 THE BIG TOMORROW by Lary May (University of Chicago: $32.50) How the world presented in Hollywood films was shaped and changed by the Depression, World War II and the Cold War.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

12 FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS by James Bradley with Ron Powers (Bantam: $24.95) A son pieces together the history of his father, who helped raise the American flag at Iwo Jima.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 12

13 IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY by Bill Bryson (Broadway Books: $25) A trek Down Under reveals the hottest, driest weather and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife on the planet.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 6

14 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.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 13

15 CHAVEZ RAVINE by Don Normark (Chronicle: $29.95) Photographs of a forgotten neighborhood in the L.A. hills that was uprooted in 1950 to build Dodger Stadium.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 10

PAPERBACKS

FICTION

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

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

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

4 TARA ROAD by Maeve Binchy (Dell: $7.99) Heartbreak and disappointment along a Dublin side street.

5 BLACK NOTICE by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam: $25.95) Kay Scarpetta hunts for information in a Paris morgue.

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

7 WHITE OLEANDER by Janet Fitch (Back Bay Books: $13.95) Her mother in jail, a teenage girl survives in L.A. foster homes.

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

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

10 DARK LADY by Richard North Patterson (Ballantine: $7.99) Murder in a cold Midwestern town.

PAPERBACKS

NONFICTION

1 THE SEAT OF THE SOUL by Gary Zukav (Fireside: $13) Teaching readers to rethink the mind-body connection.

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

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

4 THE TERRIBLE HOURS by Peter Maas (HarperPaperback: $6.99) Rescuing the crew of a sunken sub and the man responsible.

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

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

7 GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL by Jared Diamond (W.W. Norton: $14.95) The part played by this triad in history.

8 LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME by James W. Loewen (Touchstone: $14) History textbooks that “make students stupid.”

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

10 NO ONE LEFT TO LIE TO by Christopher Hitchens (Verso: $10) An invective against the Clinton presidency.

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Rankings are based on a Times poll of Southland bookstores.