TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of February 28, 1999

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1
THE TESTAMENT
John Grisham
Cover of THE TESTAMENT

THE TESTAMENT

by John Grisham · Doubleday

9 wks at #1 · 2 on list

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions—a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives. Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage in a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humor. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder. Rachel Lane is a young woman who chose to give her life to God, who walked away from the modern world with all its strivings and trappings and encumbrances, and went to live and work with a primitive tribe of Indians in the deepest jungles of Brazil. In a story that mixes legal suspense with a remarkable adventure, their lives are forever altered by the startling secret of The Testament. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!

2
SOUTHERN CROSS
Patricia Cornwell
Cover of SOUTHERN CROSS

SOUTHERN CROSS

by Patricia Cornwell · Putnam

5 wks on list

Judy Hammer has been sent to Richmond, Virginia to help clean up their police force, and while she is there, she joins her deputy chief in the most challenging case of their career.

3
RANSOM
Julie Garwood
Cover of RANSOM

RANSOM

by Julie Garwood · Pocket

2 wks on list

Sweeps from Scotland to England during medieval days. Page-turner of passion, loyalty, justice and honor.

4
A MAN IN FULL
Tom Wolfe
Cover of A MAN IN FULL

A MAN IN FULL

by Tom Wolfe · Farrar, Straus & Giroux

15 wks on list

The essential collection of Tom Wolfe’s writing on a turning-point era in modern American culture. The Purple Decades brings together the author's selections from his list of critically acclaimed publications, including the complete text of Mau-Mauing and the Flak Catchers, his account of the wild games the poverty program encouraged minority groups to play. It was in the 1960s and 1970s—those “purple decades”—that Tom Wolfe rose to fame as one of the late-twentieth-century pioneers of American literature. He became the foremost chronicler of the gaudiest period in American history, much of which is spread out before us in these selections from nine of his books. Wolfe’s innovations in style, his feats as a reporter, and his insights into modern American life dominated a period of widespread experimentation in the writing of nonfiction. Wolfe’s contributions to the language of the purple decades range from the phrases “the right stuff” to “radical chic,” the latter of which he coined in 1970, when Leonard Bernstein gave a party for the Black Panthers in his apartment on Park Avenue; and on to “the Me Decade,” as the 1970s were dubbed as soon as Wolfe’s essay “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening” appeared in 1976. The complete texts of “The Last American Hero” and “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” and long sections of “Radical Chic” and The Right Stuff, are included here in The Purple Decades. Generous selections from both From Bauhaus to Our House and The Painted Word also appear here, as well as many stories from The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Pump House Gang, and Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine. When Tom Wolfe’s first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, was published in 1965, Newsweek predicted: “This will be a sharp pleasure to reread years from now, when it will bring back, like a falcon in the sky of memory, a whole world that is currently jetting and jazzing its way somewhere or other.” In these pages the falcon flies with big talons, and an even bigger grin, across the first two decades of Tom Wolfe’s literary career.

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THE POISONWOOD BIBLE
Barbara Kingsolver
Cover of THE POISONWOOD BIBLE

THE POISONWOOD BIBLE

by Barbara Kingsolver · Harper Flamingo

18 wks on list

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the self-centered, teenaged Rachel; shrewd adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility. Dancing between the dark comedy of human failings and the breathtaking possibilities of human hope, The Poisonwood Bible possesses all that has distinguished Barbara Kingsolver's previous work, and extends this beloved writer's vision to an entirely new level. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel establishes Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers.

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IN DANGER'S PATH
W. E. B. Griffin
Cover of IN DANGER'S PATH

IN DANGER'S PATH

by W. E. B. Griffin · Putnam

5 wks on list

Put in charge of the OSS's Pacific operations, General Fleming Pickering is faced with two covert missions in the Gobi Desert. Called to duty is a Marine he doesn't expect...a scapegrace pilot named Malcolm, his son. Together, they will venture incognito--and with luck they may even come out alive...

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SEIZE THE NIGHT
Dean Koontz
Cover of SEIZE THE NIGHT

SEIZE THE NIGHT

by Dean Koontz · Bantam

7 wks on list

Christopher Snow uses his rare genetic disorder to his advantage when he looks for the children missing from Moonlight Bay.

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BILLY STRAIGHT
Jonathan Kellerman
Cover of BILLY STRAIGHT

BILLY STRAIGHT

by Jonathan Kellerman · Random House

7 wks on list

A homeless boy in Los Angeles goes on the run after seeing a murder. Billy Straight, 12, witnessed the stabbing of a TV star's ex-wife and is sought by police and villains alike. He is afraid that if caught he will be returned to the abusive home from where he ran away. By the author of The Clinic.

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NEW
BE COOL
Elmore Leonard
Cover of BE COOL

BE COOL

by Elmore Leonard · Delacorte Press

1 wks on list

The sequel to Chili Palmer's hit movie Get Leo tanked and now Chili's itching for a comeback. So when a power lunch with record-label executive and former associate Tommy Athens ends in a mob hit, he soon finds himself in an unlikely alliance with organized-crime detective Darryl Holmes and the likely next target of Russian gangsters. But where others see danger, Chili Palmer sees story possibilities. Enter Linda Moon, a singer with aspirations that go further than her current gig in a Spice Girls cover band. Chili takes over as Linda's manager, entering the world of rock stars, pop divas, and hip-hop gangstas. As he wings his way to success in the music business with his trademark cool, Chili manipulates his adversaries and advances his friends, all the while basing the plot of his new film on the action that results. Be Cool is rife with drama, jealousy, and betrayal, and all Chili needs to do is survive to make a new box-office hit.

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THE CAT WHO SAW STARS
Lilian Jackson Braun
Cover of THE CAT WHO SAW STARS

THE CAT WHO SAW STARS

by Lilian Jackson Braun · Putnam

5 wks on list

Qwill and his felines are hoping for a peaceful month at their lake-side cabin but when rumors begin to circulate that UFOs are responsible for the disappearance of a stray backpacker, discovered dead at the lake shore, Qwill finds it difficult to maintain a vacation mode.

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NEW
APOLLYON
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

APOLLYON

by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins · Tyndale

1 wks on list

THE FIFTH TRUMPET JUDGMENT-A PLAGUE OF SCORPION LIKE LOCUSTS LED BY APOLLYON, CHIEF DEMON OF THE ABYSS-IS SO HORRIFYING THAT MEN TRY TO KILL THEMSELVES BUT ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE.

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AMSTERDAM
Ian McEwan
Cover of AMSTERDAM

AMSTERDAM

by Ian McEwan · Talese/Doubleday

6 wks on list

In the affairs of his dead wife, a British publisher discovers compromising pictures of the foreign secretary who was her lover. An opportunity for revenge on both the political and personal level.--

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NEW
A NIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR
Jewel Kilcher
Cover of A NIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR

A NIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR

by Jewel Kilcher · HarperCollins

20 wks on list

Now available in paperback--the bestselling collection of intimate poetry from singer-songwrier Jewel, one of today's most beloved popular music artists. (Poetry)

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