Southern California Rating:FICTION1 THE JAMES DEAN AFFAIR...

Southern California Rating:

FICTION

1 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: --; Weeks on List: 1

2 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: 14; Weeks on List: 3

3 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: 7; Weeks on List: 3

4 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.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 17

5 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: 1

6 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: 11; Weeks on List: 17

7 ECHO PARK by Steve Scott (San Diego Writers’ Monthly Press: $24) Eccentric lives intersect when a body is discovered near a house overlooking the famous park.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 2

8 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: 8

9 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.

Last Week: 15; Weeks on List: 5

10 DEADLY DECISIONS by Kathy Reichs (Scribner: $25) A forensic anthropologist investigates the connections between a skull found in Montreal and the skeleton of a teenager in North Carolina.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

11 MOVE TO STRIKE by Perri O’Shaughnessy (Delacorte: $23.95) A lawyer must navigate a tangled family web in order to defend a 16-year-old girl accused of murdering her uncle.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 2

12 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: --; Weeks on List: 9

13 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.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 15

14 BEE SEASON by Myla Goldberg (Doubleday: $22.95) A 9-year-old girl’s sudden success in spelling bees divides her family and causes each member to reassess the meaning of love and relationships.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 3

15 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.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 8

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: 13; Weeks on List: 25

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: 4; Weeks on List: 14

3 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: 5; Weeks on List: 5

4 BRAVE JOURNEYS by David Mixner and Dennis Bailey (Bantam: $24.95) Profiles in gay and lesbian courage, of seven men and women who worked to transform the political and societal landscape.

Last Week: 14; Weeks on List: 3

5 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: 8; Weeks on List: 19

6 GREENE & GREENE by Randell L. Makinson and Thomas A. Heinz (Gibbs Smith: $49.95) Photographs of the newly restored Blacker House, the largest most elaborate Greene & Greene home.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

7 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: 15; Weeks on List: 28

8 DANCES WITH LUIGI by Paul E. Paolicelli (St. Martin’s: $24.95) A journalist moves to Italy in an attempt to piece together the mysteries surrounding both his grandfathers.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

9 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: 1; Weeks on List: 5

10 ALL ABOUT LOVE by bell hooks (William Morrow: $22) How our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love, established in childhood, often fail us in adulthood.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

11 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: 9

12 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: 10; Weeks on List: 14

13 WILLIAM MULHOLLAND AND THE RISE OF LOS ANGELES by Catherine Mulholland (University of California Press: $35) A granddaughter tells the story of the man who brought water to our Los Angeles desert.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

14 NOWHERE MAN by Robert Rosen (Soft Skull Press: $22.50) A new look at the last days of John Lennon, as he struggled with schizophrenia and the perils of fame.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

15 THE NOTHING THAT IS by Robert Kaplan (Oxford University Press: $22) A tale of the origins and uses of the number zero; part history, part philosophy and part intrigue.

Last Week: --; Weeks on List: 1

PAPERBACKS

FICTION

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

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

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

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

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

6 THE ALCHEMIST by Paulo Coehlo (HarperSan Francisco: $13 ) A fable about following dreams.

7 THE SAVING GRACES by Patricia Gaffney (HarperCollins: $6.99) Four friends share life with one another.

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

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

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

PAPERBACKS

NONFICTION

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

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

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

4 NO ONE LEFT TO LIE TO by Christopher Hitchens (Verso: $10) Clinton Agonistes.

5 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES (Bantam: $2.95) Let freedom ring.

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

7 THE BIG TITLE by Barry Rubinstein and Lyle M. Spencer (Broadway Books: $19.95) The NBA finals in retrospect.

8 DAY HIKES AROUND LOS ANGELES by Robert Stone (Day Hike Books: $11.95) Forty-five paths to glory.

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

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

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Rankings are based on a Times poll of Southland bookstores.