TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of February 6, 2005

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1
THE BROKER
John Grisham
Cover of THE BROKER

THE BROKER

by John Grisham · Doubleday

5 wks at #1 · 2 on list

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system. Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis. Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive—there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?

2
THE DA VINCI CODE
Dan Brown
Cover of THE DA VINCI CODE

THE DA VINCI CODE

by Dan Brown · Doubleday

97 wks on list

THE #1 WORLDWIDE BESTSELLING PHENOMENON, WITH MORE THAN 85 MILLION COPIES SOLD “Blockbuster perfection . . . a gleefully erudite suspense novel.” —The New York Times “A pulse-quickening, brain-teasing adventure.” —People While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is awakened by a phone call in the dead of the night. The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci—clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion, a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle—while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move—the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever. Robert Langdon returns in The Lost Symbol, Inferno, Origin, and The Secret of Secrets (coming soon)!

3
THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN
Mitch Albom
Cover of THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN

THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN

by Mitch Albom · Hyperion

70 wks on list

Plot Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him, as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here" Personal Details Collection Status In Collection Index 10 Read It Yes Links Amazon US Product Details LoC Classification PS3601.L335F59 2003 Dewey 813/.6

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BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT
W. E. B. Griffin
Cover of BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

by W. E. B. Griffin · Putnam

4 wks on list

When a leased Boeing 727 mysteriously vanishes after two passengers murder the pilot, Army intelligence officer Major Carlos Guillermo Castillo, a veteran of the Special Forces, is called in by the president of the United States to uncover the truth and embarks on an undercover investigation into a case with frightening implications.

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CHAINFIRE
Terry Goodkind
Cover of CHAINFIRE

CHAINFIRE

by Terry Goodkind · Tor/Tom Doherty

3 wks on list

Richard struggles to find his missing wife Kahlan in spite of the bizarre fact that no one else seems to believe she actually exists or that he is married to her.

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1
NIGHT FALL
Nelson DeMille
Cover of NIGHT FALL

NIGHT FALL

by Nelson DeMille · Warner

9 wks on list

New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille does it again with Elite Anti-terrorist Task Force Agents John Corey and Kate Mayfield discovering corruption deep in the FBI and they set out to find the truth. On a Long Island beach at dusk, Bob Mitchell and JanetWhitney conduct their illicit love affair in front of a video camera, set to record each steamy moment. Suddenly a terrible explosion lights up the sky. Grabbing the camera, the couple flees as approaching police cars speed toward the scene. Five years later, the crash of Flight 800 has been attributed to a mechanical mal-function. But for John Corey and Kate Mayfield, both members of the Elite Anti-terrorist Task Force, the case is not closed. Suspecting a cover-up at the highest levels and disobeying orders, they set out to find the one piece of evidence that will prove the truth about what really happened to Flight 800-the videotape that shows a couple making love on the beach and the last moments of the doomed airliner.

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A SALTY PIECE OF LAND
Jimmy Buffett
Cover of A SALTY PIECE OF LAND

A SALTY PIECE OF LAND

by Jimmy Buffett · Little, Brown

8 wks on list

Wander to "where the song of the ocean / Meets the salty piece of land" with Tully Mars, washed up from Margaritaville and in the mood for monkeyshines, in a shimmering Caribbean epic by the late king of tropical rock, Jimmy Buffett. It's not on any chart, but the tropical island of Cayo Loco is the perfect place to run away from all your problems. Waking from a ganja buzz on the beach in Tulum, Tully can't believe his eyes when a 142-foot schooner emerges out of the ocean mist. At its helm is Cleopatra Highbourne, the eccentric 101-year-old sea captain who will take him to a lighthouse on a salty piece of land that will change his life forever. From a lovely sunset sail in Punta Margarita to a wild spring-break foam party in San Pedro, Tully encounters an assortment of treasure hunters, rock stars, sailors, seaplane pilots, pirates, and even a ghost or two.

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NEW
LONDON BRIDGES
James Patterson
Cover of LONDON BRIDGES

LONDON BRIDGES

by James Patterson · Little, Brown

10 wks on list

When the world's largest cities are seized by terrorists who threaten to set off deadly bombs unless their demands are met, Alex Cross heads a joint investigation by the FBI, CIA, and Interpol to outmaneuver two vicious criminals known as the Weasel and the Wolf. By the author of The Big Bad Wolf.

12
BLACK WIND
Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler
Cover of BLACK WIND

BLACK WIND

by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler · Putnam

8 wks on list

National Underwater and Marine Agency head Dirk Pitt, his marine engineer son, Dirk, and his marine biologist daughter, Summer, struggle to prevent two World War II-era Japanese submarines carrying biological weapons from getting into the wrong hands.

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NEW
GILEAD
Marilynne Robinson
Cover of GILEAD

GILEAD

by Marilynne Robinson · Farrar, Straus & Giroux

1 wks on list

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER• OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER• A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD “Quietly powerful [and] moving.” O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended reading) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, GILEAD is a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part. In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son. This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.

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THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA
Philip Roth
Cover of THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA

by Philip Roth · Houghton Mifflin

16 wks on list

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY “It's not a prophecy; it's a nightmare. . . . [A] sinuous and brilliant book, with its extreme sweetness, its black pain, and its low, ceaseless cackle.” —The New Yorker “Huge, inflammatory, painfully moving. . . .Far and away the most outward-looking, expansive. . . book Roth has written." —The Washington Post Book World “A terrific political novel. . . . sinister, vivid, dreamlike. . . creepily plausible." —The New York Times Book Review “Ambitous and chilling . . . a breathtaking leap of imagination. . . . The writing is brilliant.” —USA Today In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America—and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.

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THE CAT WHO WENT BANANAS
Lilian Jackson Braun
Cover of THE CAT WHO WENT BANANAS

THE CAT WHO WENT BANANAS

by Lilian Jackson Braun · Putnam

James Qwilleran and his talented team of feline sleuths, Koko and Yum Yum, investigate the supposedly accidental death of a cast member in a car crash on the eve of the Theatre Club's performance of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest."

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