TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of September 30, 2007

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1
NEW
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
James Patterson and Howard Roughan

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED

by James Patterson and Howard Roughan · Little, Brown

2 wks at #1 · 1 on list

Kristin Burns works as a full-time nanny to the two beautiful children of the wealthy Turnbull family, all the time working towards her goal of becoming a New York fashion photographer. Just as her dreams seem to be coming true, her life takes on a sinister edge, as she becomes involved in a forbidden but dangerous love.

2
1
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
Khaled Hosseini
Cover of A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

by Khaled Hosseini · Riverhead

17 wks on list

1 New York Times bestselling author. Main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and Literary Guild. Both born in Afghanistan a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family Mariam and Laila are brought together by war by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them - in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul - they form a bond that will ultimately alter the course of their lives and the lives of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice and that in the end it is love or even the memory of love that is often the key to survival. "Searing ... forceful ... harrowing." - Publishers Weekly starred. "Unimaginably tragic Hosseini's magnificent second novel is a sad and beautiful testament to both Afghani suffering and strength. Readers who lost themselves in The Kite Runner will not want to miss this unforgettable follow-up." - Booklist starred

5
2
BONES TO ASHES
Kathy Reichs
Cover of BONES TO ASHES

BONES TO ASHES

by Kathy Reichs · Scribner

3 wks on list

In her most riveting thriller yet, Reichs--bestselling author, forensic anthropologist, and producer of the television hit Bones, based on her Temperance Brennan books--pits Brennan against an enigma out of her own past.

6
NEW
THE WEDNESDAY LETTERS
Jason F. Wright
Cover of THE WEDNESDAY LETTERS

THE WEDNESDAY LETTERS

by Jason F. Wright · Shadow Mountain

1 wks on list

The national bestselling author of "The Christmas Jars" delivers a powerful message about forgiveness and quietly beckons people to start writing their own Wednesday letters.

7
NEW
GARDEN SPELLS
Sarah Addison Allen
Cover of GARDEN SPELLS

GARDEN SPELLS

by Sarah Addison Allen · Bantam

1 wks on list

Sisters Claire and Sydney are the last of their curious family, a family that have always had peculiar gifts that make them outsiders in their small North Carolina town. When Sydney leaves, then later returns home with a young daughter the sisters must deal with their common legacy and each other.

9
5
DARK POSSESSION
Christine Feehan
Cover of DARK POSSESSION

DARK POSSESSION

by Christine Feehan · Berkley

3 wks on list

#1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan returns to her uniquely sensual Carpathian world in a novel about the nature of true love and the unnatural forces that could destroy it... Manolito De La Cruz knew he was dangerously close to turning into a vampire. The last thing he expected after being called back to his Carpathian homeland by Prince Mikhail was to catch the scent of his destined lifemate in MaryAnn Delaney. MaryAnn is human, but she knows all too well the overwhelmingly aggressive instincts of Carpathian males. And they’re not exactly the kind of men she’d prefer to be bound to for life. A dedicated counselor for battered women, MaryAnn has a fulfilling life with no room for someone like Manolito, born and bred in the Carpathian mountains, a law unto himself. But when MaryAnn agrees to go to South America to offer guidance to a brutalized young woman, she has no idea of the trap that awaits her in the sweltering thick of the jungle. She has been lured there by Manolito himself, who has seductive plans for the unaware, irresistibly human female...

11
AWAY
Amy Bloom
Cover of AWAY

AWAY

by Amy Bloom · Random House

4 wks on list

Amy Bloom's Away revitalizes the American road-trip novel from the perspective of a vulnerable but spirited woman. It paints a vivid, earthy and surprising picture of 1920s America, its smells and textures, its population of drifters and con artists, pimps and prostitutes. Away is storytelling at its finest - epic in sweep, but intimate and psychologically acute, moving but unsentimental. Like the novels of Sarah Waters, it is both richly authentic in its period detail and fresh and contemporary in its style. But, above all, Bloom has created an unforgettable character in Lillian Leyb - her voice, haunted, damaged yet innocent, passionate, witty and unpretentious, is so believable and strong that her presence lingers long after the novel ends.

12
5
PLAY DIRTY
Sandra Brown
Cover of PLAY DIRTY

PLAY DIRTY

by Sandra Brown · Simon & Schuster

5 wks on list

A man of uncertain character finds his past haunting him when a madman targets him and the people he loves, and he must face his sins in order to protect himself and others.

13
3
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO
Junot Díaz
Cover of THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO

THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO

by Junot Díaz · Riverhead

2 wks on list

Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.

14
NEW
THE 47TH SAMURAI
Stephen Hunter
Cover of THE 47TH SAMURAI

THE 47TH SAMURAI

by Stephen Hunter · Simon & Schuster

1 wks on list

In The 47th Samurai, Bob Lee Swagger, the gritty hero of Stephen Hunter's bestselling novels Point of Impact and Time to Hunt, returns in this intense and exotic thriller. Bob Lee Swagger and Philip Yano are bound together by a single moment at Iwo Jima, 1945, when their fathers, two brave fighters on opposite sides, met in the bloody and chaotic battle for the island. Only Earl Swagger survived. More than sixty years later, Yano comes to America to honor the legacy of his heroic father by recovering the sword he used in the battle. His search has led him to Crazy Horse, Idaho, where Bob Lee, ex-marine and Vietnam veteran, has settled into a restless retirement and immediately pledges himself to Yano's quest. Bob Lee finds the sword and delivers it to Yano in Tokyo. On inspection, they discover that it is not a standard WWII blade, but a legendary shin-shinto katana, an artifact of the nation. It is priceless but worth killing for. Suddenly Bob is at the center of a series of terrible crimes he barely understands but vows to avenge. And to do so, he throws himself into the world of the samurai, Tokyo's dark, criminal yakuza underworld, and the unwritten rules of Japanese culture. Swagger's allies, hard-as-nails, American-born Susan Okada and the brave, cocaine-dealing tabloid journalist Nick Yamamoto, help him move through this strange, glittering, and ominous world from the shady bosses of the seamy Kabukicho district to officials in the highest echelons of the Japanese government, but in the end, he is on his own and will succeed only if he can learn that to survive samurai, you must become samurai. As the plot races and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that a ruthless conspiracy is in place, and the only thing that can be taken for granted is that money, power, and sex can drive men of all nationalities to gruesome extremes. If Swagger hopes to stop them, he must be willing not only to die but also to kill.

15
NEW
HEARTSICK
Chelsea Cain
Cover of HEARTSICK

HEARTSICK

by Chelsea Cain · St. Martin’s Minotaur

He thinks he sees a flash of emotion in her eyes. Sympathy? Then it's gone. 'Whatever you think this is going to be like,' she whispers, 'it's going to be worse.' When beautiful serial killer Gretchen Lowell captured her last victim - the man in charge of hunting her down - she quickly established who was really in control of the investigation. So why, after ten days of horrifying physical and mental torture, did she release Detective Archie Sheridan from the brink of death and hand herself in? Two years on, Archie now returns to lead the search for a new killer, whose recent attacks on teenage girls have left the city of Portland reeling. Shadowed by vulnerable young reporter Susan Ward, Archie knows that only one person can help him climb into the mind of this psychopath. But can Archie finally manage to confront the demons of his past without being consumed by them? 'Dark, distressing and disturbing . . . Just pray you never meet Gretchen' Val McDermid 'What may be the creepiest serial killer ever created. This is an addictive read!' Tess Gerritsen 'Move over Thomas Harris, there's a new kid on the block . . . Compelling, highly believable and very sexy' Daily Mirror

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