TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of August 1, 1993

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1
THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY
Robert James Waller
Cover of THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY

by Robert James Waller · Warner

38 wks at #1 · 51 on list

Fall in love with one of the bestselling novels of all time -- the legendary love story that became a beloved film starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep. If you've ever experienced the one true love of your life, a love that for some reason could never be, you will understand why readers all over the world are so moved by this small, unknown first novel that they became a publishing phenomenon and #1 bestseller. The story of Robert Kincaid, the photographer and free spirit searching for the covered bridges of Madison County, and Francesca Johnson, the farm wife waiting for the fulfillment of a girlhood dream, The Bridges of Madison County gives voice to the longings of men and women everywhere -- and shows us what it is to love and be loved so intensely that life is never the same again.

2
THE CLIENT
John Grisham
Cover of THE CLIENT

THE CLIENT

by John Grisham · Doubleday

20 wks on list

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A white-knuckle legal thriller that begins in a weedy lot on the outskirts of Memphis, when two boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull up to the curb. . . . “The desire to find out what happens next keeps the reader turning the pages. Grisham is an absolute master of the chase story.”—The Washington Post Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarette when a chance encounter with a suicidal lawyer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most sought-after dead body in America. Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer for all of four years. Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And Reggie will do anything to protect her client—even take a last, desperate gamble that could win Mark his freedom . . . or cost them both their lives.

3
THE NIGHT MANAGER
John le Carré
Cover of THE NIGHT MANAGER
5
PLEADING GUILTY
Scott Turow
Cover of PLEADING GUILTY

PLEADING GUILTY

by Scott Turow · Farrar, Straus & Giroux

9 wks on list

Presumed Innocent launched Scott Turow's career as one of the pre-eminent legal thriller writers in America and was later adapted to a major feature film starring Harrison Ford. “This one will keep you up at nights, engrossed and charged with adrenaline.” —People The novel tells the story of Rusty Sabicch, chief deputy prosecutor in a large Midwestern city. With three weeks to go in his boss' re-election campaign, a member of Rusty's staff is found murdered; he is charged with finding the killer, until his boss loses and, incredibly, Rusty finds himself accused of the murder.

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PIGS IN HEAVEN
Barbara Kingsolver
Cover of PIGS IN HEAVEN

PIGS IN HEAVEN

by Barbara Kingsolver · HarperCollins

6 wks on list

Six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, leading to a man's dramatic rescue. But Turtle's moment of celebrity draws her into a crisis of historical proportions that will envelop not only her and her mother, Taylor, but everyone else who touched their lives in a complex web connecting their future with their past. With this wise, compelling novel, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, and Animal Dreams vividly renders a world of heartbreak and redeeming love as she defines and defies the boundaries of family, and illuminates the many separate truths about the ties that bind us and tear us apart.

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2
THE SCORPIO ILLUSION
Robert Ludlum
Cover of THE SCORPIO ILLUSION

THE SCORPIO ILLUSION

by Robert Ludlum · Bantam

9 wks on list

From the bestselling author of The Bourne Identity, a deftly plotted story of a brilliant and seductive woman who lives singlemindedly for vengeance; the powerful forces that support her; and the one man who must find her. Contains all the hallmarks of classic Ludlum adventures--lightning-swift action, deception and disguise.

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2
HILL TOWNS
Anne Rivers Siddons
Cover of HILL TOWNS

HILL TOWNS

by Anne Rivers Siddons · HarperCollins

4 wks on list

Hill Towns is a classic novel of remarkable emotional power, insight, and sensitivity from Anne Rivers Siddons, whose books live on the New York Times bestseller list and in the hearts of millions of her adoring fans. One of the acknowledged masters of contemporary Southern fiction—the author of such phenomenally popular works as Nora, Nora; Outer Banks, Islands; and Sweetwater Creek—Siddons carries the reader from the mountains of Tennessee to the breathtaking Tuscany countryside as she brilliantly chronicles the unraveling of a marriage. Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides) says, “She ranks among the best of us,” and Hill Towns is the proof.

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3
GAI-JIN
James Clavell
Cover of GAI-JIN

GAI-JIN

by James Clavell · Delacorte Press

13 wks on list

"Grand in scope and scale, filled with the richness and passion of two great histories coming together, Gai-jin is the long-awaited sixth novel in James Clavell's magnificent Asian Saga. Sweeping us back to the enigmatic and elusive land of his best-selling Shogun, he weaves an extraordinary tale of Japan, now newly open to gai-jin - foreigners - and teeming with contradictions as the ancient and the modern meet in a clash of cultures, of nations, of generations." "It is 1862, and in Japan's Foreign Settlement of Yokohama, reverberations from an explosive act of violence will forever alter - and connect - the lives of the major characters. Malcolm Struan, at twenty, is heir to the title of tai-pan of the most powerful and bitterly contested English trading company in the Orient, the Noble House. Malcolm's fate, and that of his family's legacy, become inextricably intertwined with that of a beautiful young French woman, Angelique Richaud. Desired by many, loved purely and passionately by Malcolm, Angelique will hold the future of the Noble House in her hands." "Intricately interwoven into the story of the struggle for control of the Noble House is a powerful parallel story of the Land of the Gods, Japan, a country ripped apart by greed, idealism, and terrorism as groups of young xenophobic revolutionaries, ronin, attempt to seize the Shogunate and expel the hated gai-jin from Japan. One man, Lord Toranaga Yoshi, a direct descendant of the first Toranaga Shogun, attempts not only to protect the Shogunate, but to usher it, and Japan, into the modern age." "Amid the brutality and heroism, the betrayals and the stunning romance, a multilayered, complex story unfolds. Here the dark and erotic world of the pleasure houses - the Ladies of the Willow World, spies, and terrorists - meets the world of pageantry and power - monarchs and diplomats. And here East meets West in an inevitable collision of two equally powerful cultures as James Clavell creates a vibrant and authentic portrait of a time that is gone forever...but of a world not unlike our own."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

15
NEW
A CASE OF NEED
Michael Crichton writing as Jeffery Hudson
Cover of A CASE OF NEED

A CASE OF NEED

by Michael Crichton writing as Jeffery Hudson · Dutton

Murder? Botched surgery? Accidental malpractice? Someone violating the Hippocratic oath? No one knows exactly ... Only one doctor is willing to push his way through the hidden medical data and secrets to learn the truth.

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