TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of September 13, 1981

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
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4
GORKY PARK
Martin Cruz Smith
Cover of GORKY PARK

GORKY PARK

by Martin Cruz Smith · Random House

23 wks on list

A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and the New York City police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything. -- Book Description.

8
4
LUCIANO'S LUCK
Jack Higgins
Cover of LUCIANO'S LUCK

LUCIANO'S LUCK

by Jack Higgins · Stein and Day

3 wks on list

In Nazi-occupied Sicily, three people have a mission--to contact the head of the Sicilian Mafia and pave the way for the Allied invasion of Sicily.

10
3
NIGHT PROBE!
Clive Cussler
Cover of NIGHT PROBE!

NIGHT PROBE!

by Clive Cussler · Bantam

4 wks on list

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Cussler is hard to beat' Daily Mail The page-turning Dirk Pitt classic from multi-million-copy king of the adventure novel, Clive Cussler. May 1914. Two diplomats hurry home by sea and rail, each carrying a document of world-changing importance. Then the liner Empress of India is sunk in a collision, and the Manhattan-Line express plunges from a bridge - both dragging their VIP passengers to watery oblivion. Tragic coincidence or conspiracy? In the energy-starved, fear-torn 1980s, Dirk Pitt discovers that those long-lost papers could destroy whole nations, throwing him into his biggest challenge yet. Racing against hired killers, he launches his revolutionary deep-sea search craft and faces the horrors of the sea bed to hunt for the documents. 'Night Probe' has begun . . . 'Clive Cussler is the guy I read' Tom Clancy 'The Adventure King' Daily Express

12
5
TRADE WIND
M.M. Kaye
Cover of TRADE WIND

TRADE WIND

by M.M. Kaye · St. Martin's

8 wks on list

An American missionary encounters disease, revolution, intrigue, and a renegade slave trader in a faraway land in this classic historical adventure. When Boston bluestocking Hero Athena Hollis travels to Zanzibar to visit her uncle, an American consul, she arrives filled with self-righteousness and bent on good deeds. She believes that slavery is wrong and is determined to do what she can to stop it. But she soon finds that maintaining her ideals is not so easy. Then she meets Rory Frost, a cynical, wicked, shrewd, and good-humored trader in slaves. What is Hero to make of him—and of her feelings for him? "Irresistibly romantic." — Cosmopolitan

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2
WOMEN'S WORK
Anne Tolstoi Wallach
Cover of WOMEN'S WORK

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.