BEST-SELLERS

— Fiction 1. FREEDOM, by Jonathan Franzen. A family of Midwestern liberals during the Bush years; by the author of The Corrections.

2. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson. The third volume of a trilogy about a Swedish hacker and a journalist.

3. NO MERCY, by Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Book 19 of the Dark-Hunter paranormal series.

4. GETTING TO HAPPY, by Terry McMillan. Revisiting the four women from Waiting to Exhale, 15 years later.

5. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. A young white woman and two black maids in 1960s Mississippi.

6. THE POSTCARD KILLERS, by James Patterson and Liza Marklund. An NYPD detective joins a Swedish reporter in a search for the killer of young couples in Europe, including his daughter and her boyfriend.

7. LOST EMPIRE, by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood. Sam and Remi Fargo, a husband-and-wife treasure-hunting team, pursue an important relic.

8. APE HOUSE, by Sara Gruen. Bonobos disappear from a research laboratory and turn up on reality TV, to the consternation of a scientist who studies them; from the author of Water for Elephants.

9. ZERO HISTORY, by William Gibson.

Several characters from “Spook Country” return to a viral marketing and coolhunting agency; from the author of Pattern Recognition and Neuromancer.

10. DARK PERIL, by Christine Feehan.

A Dragonseeker on a deadly mission; a Carpathian novel.

Nonfiction 1. THE GRAND DESIGN, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Central questions of philosophy and science, from the author of A Brief History of Time.

2. CRIMES AGAINST LIBERTY, by David Limbaugh. A political indictment of the Obama presidency.

3. A JOURNEY, by Tony Blair. A memoir by the former British prime minister.

4.

——— MY DAD SAYS, by Justin Halpern. A coming-of-age memoir organized around the musings, purveyed on Twitter, of the author’s father.

5. THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS, by Isabel Wilkerson. The Great Migration of blacks who fled the South, starting in 1915.

6. OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. Why some people succeed has to do with luck and opportunity, from the author of Blink.

7. THE BIG SHORT, by Michael Lewis.

The people who saw the real estate crash coming and made billions from their foresight.

8. EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON, by S.C. Gwynne. The story of Quanah Parker, the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.

9. BOB DYLAN IN AMERICA, by Sean Wilentz. Dylan’s music in the context of its time.

10. THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, by Rebecca Skloot. The story of a woman whose cancer cells were cultured without her permission in 1951.

Paperback fiction 1. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson. A hacker and a journalist investigate the disappearance of a Swedish heiress.

2. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, by Stieg Larsson. A Swedish hacker becomes a murder suspect.

3. LITTLE BEE, by Chris Cleave. The lives of a British woman and a Nigerian girl collide.

4. HALF BROKE HORSES, by Jeannette Walls. A re-creation of the life of the author’s grandmother, a mustang breaker, schoolteacher, ranch wife and mother of two in the Southwest.

5. CUTTING FOR STONE, by Abraham Verghese. Twin brothers, conjoined and then separated, grow up amid the political turmoil of Ethiopia.

Paperback nonfiction 1. EAT, PRAY, LOVE, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

A writer’s yearlong journey in search of self takes her to Italy, India and Indonesia.

2. THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. A former climber builds schools in villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

3. THE GLASS CASTLE, by Jeannette Walls. The author recalls a bizarre childhood during which she was constantly on the move.

4. OPEN, by Andre Agassi. The tennis champion’s autobiography.

5. WHERE MEN WIN GLORY, by Jon Krakauer. The story of Pat Tillman and the Army’s cover-up of his death by “friendly fire” in Afghanistan.

Perspective, Pages 83 on 09/26/2010

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