Southern California Rating:FICTION1. BE COOL by...

Southern California Rating:

FICTION

1. BE COOL by Elmore Leonard (Delacorte: $24.95) Fresh from his movie success, Chili Palmer faces a pack of punks, thugs and other Tinsel Town toughies when he enters the music biz.

Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 3

2. THE TESTAMENT by John Grisham (Doubleday: $27.95) The 10th richest man in the U.S. is about to die, and his heirs are circling like vultures.

Last Week: 1; Weeks on List: 4

3. AMSTERDAM by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday: $21) A journalist, composer and politician ease feelings of emptiness by sabotaging one another’s careers.

Last Week: 4; Weeks on List: 12

4. WHILE I WAS GONE by Sue Miller (Knopf: $24) A married woman looks back on the summer of ’68 when a character from that time reappears in her life.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

5. A SUDDEN CHANGE OF HEART by Barbara Taylor Bradford (Doubleday: $24) A story of child abuse, terminal cancer, bisexuality, divorce, art theft and the Holocaust.

Last Week: 9; Weeks on List: 2

6. SOUTHERN CROSS by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam: $25.95) Cornwell takes a close look at the personal and professional lives of big-city police.

Last Week: 7; Weeks on List: 7

7. AMY AND ISABELLE by Elizabeth Strout (Random House: $22.95) A novel of integrity and humor about the bravery and hard choices of ordinary life in a small town.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

8. A MAN IN FULL by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: $28.95) The story of a real estate tycoon’s crash and burn and the sleaze who warm themselves by the fire.

Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 17

9. DREAMING SOUTHERN by Linda Bruckheimer (Dutton: $23.95) A mother and her children head west on Route 66 to join her husband and get into mishaps along the way.

Last Week: 5; Weeks on List: 9

10. RANSOM by Julie Garwood (Pocket: $24) Romance and intrigue between a Scottish Highlander and an English beauty during the bloody reign of King John.

Last Week: 13; Weeks on List: 3

11. IN DANGER’S PATH by W.E.B. Griffin (Putnam: $24.95) The latest chapter in Griffin’s Marine Corps series follows Fleming Pickering as he attempts a daring rescue in the Gobi Desert.

Last Week: 11; Weeks on List: 5

12. THE POISONWOOD BIBLE by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins: $27.50) An evangelical Baptist missionary takes his wife and children to the Belgian Congo in 1959.

Last Week: 6; Weeks on List: 22

13. SEND NO FLOWERS by Sandra Brown (Bantam: $18.95) A mysterious, sensitive man teaches a widow with two children to give life and love a second chance.

Last Week: 11; Weeks on List: 2

14. SEIZE THE NIGHT by Dean Koontz (Bantam: $26.95) A hideous genetic experiment claims the children and pets of the quiet community of Moonlight Bay.

Last Week: 14; Weeks on List: 3

15. ANGELS FLIGHT by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown: $24) A lawyer who has charged the LAPD with racism and brutality is murdered at the foot of the funicular.

Last Week: 8; Weeks on List: 10

****

NONFICTION

1. 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: 1; Weeks on List: 12

2. TRAVELING MERCIES by Anne Lamott (Pantheon: $23) The growth of Lamott’s beliefs and how they helped her overcome grief, alcoholism and bad hair days.

Last Week: 5; Weeks on List: 2

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

Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 61

4. ELEGY FOR IRIS by John Bayley (St. Martin’s: $22.95) A portrait of the love affair, and marriage, of novelists Iris Murdoch and John Bayley.

Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 4

5. PLAYING FOR KEEPS by David Halberstam (Random House: $24.95) A discussion of class, race, society and history, through the prism of Michael Jordan’s life.

Last Week: 14; Weeks on List: 4

6. TO BEGIN AGAIN by Naomi Levy (Alfred A. Knopf: $23) A book of comfort and faith that takes on the questions that come up after personal tragedy.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 4

7. THE TIES THAT BIND by Joyce A. Ladner (John Wiley & Sons: $22.95) A book of values for parents raising children under difficult societal pressures.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

8. IN THE GARDEN OF OUR DREAMS by Shirlee T. Haizlip and Harold C. Haizlip (Kodansha: $24) Memoirs of a marriage: the shocking tale of a perfectly happy couple.

Last Week: 4; Weeks on List: 8

9. BLIND MAN’S BLUFF by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew (PublicAffairs: $25) Revelations about the secret world of American submarine espionage.

Last Week: 6; Weeks on List: 11

10. CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD, BOOK ONE by Neale Donald Walsch (Putnam: $19.95) Messages from Mr. Big about good, evil and the meaning of life.

Last Week: 7; Weeks on List: 86

11. THE CENTURY by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster (Doubleday: $60) The story of our last 100 years; a companion to an upcoming ABC special.

Last Week: 11; Weeks on List: 12

12. THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Brian Greene (W.W. Norton: $27.95) Is the universe a symphony played by strings? String theory for the general public. Reviewed by K.C. Cole, page 9.

Last Week: 13; Weeks on List: 2

13. THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN by Simon Winchester (HarperCollins: $22) The editor of the Oxford English Dictionary was helped by a brilliant mental patient.

Last Week: 9; Weeks on List: 23

14. CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD, BOOK THREE by Neale Donald Walsch (Hampton Roads: $22.95) Further dispatches on life and death dictated by the Man Upstairs.

Last Week: 8; Weeks on List: 17

15. THE RIGHT TO WRITE by Julia Cameron (Tarcher/Putnam: $19.95) Insights into the spiritual component of the writing life and how to develop your own creativity.

Last Week: 10; Weeks on List: 8

Paperbacks

FICTION

1. MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA by Arthur Golden (Vintage: $14) The life and loves of a teahouse entertainer in Kyoto.

2. THE READER by Bernard Schlink (Vintage: $11) A boyhood fling with an older woman and its aftermath.

3. CHARMING BILLY by Alice McDermott (Delta: $12.95) A family reflects on the life of a deceased relative.

4. MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE by Nicholas Sparks (Warner: $6.99) A woman seeks the author of a mysterious message.

5. ESPERANZA’S BOX OF SAINTS by Maria Amparo Escandon (Scribner:$12) A widow’s search for her child.

6. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard (Hyperion: $10.95) The Bard finds his Juliet.

7. DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD by Rebecca Wells (HarperPerennial: $13) Sisterhood in the South.

8. A PATCHWORK PLANET by Anne Tyler (Ballantine: $12.95 ) The quirky life of Barnaby Gaitlin, regular Baltimore guy.

9. THE TRIBES OF PALOS VERDES by Joy Nicholson (St. Martin’s: $10.95) A girl surfs away from a bad home life.

10. JEWEL by Bret Lott (Pocket: $14) A first-person epic of one woman’s duel with God.

****

NONFICTION

1. CRIME WAVE by James Ellroy (Random House: $12) Essays, plus two stories, about L.A.’s seamy, undead past.

2. BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott (Anchor: $12.95) The secrets of a writer, delivered with humor and generosity.

3. INTO THIN AIR by Jon Krakauer (Anchor Books: $7.99) Risk and recklessness on a deadly Mt. Everest expedition.

4. THE LAST OF THE BEST by Jim Murray (Los Angeles Times: $15.95) Pearls of journalism from the late sportswriter.

5. THE SEAT OF THE SOUL by Gary Zukav (Fireside: $12) Insights into creating the spirituality of daily life.

6. PARIS IN THE FIFTIES by Stanley Karnow (Random House: $14) A journalist’s apprenticeship in postwar Paris.

7. ORGANIZING GENIUS by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman (Perseus: $13) The secrets of genius groups.

8. OCTOBER SKY by Homer Hickam (Dell: $6.99) A boy from Coalwood, W. Va., becomes a NASA scientist.

9. THE PERFECT STORM by Sebastian Junger (HarperPaperback: $13) Fishermen trapped in a storm.

10. A CIVIL ACTION by Jonathan Harr (Vintage: $13) David versus a toxic industrial Goliath in a Massachusetts town.

Rankings are based on a Times poll of Southland bookstores.