1. “Christ the Lord,” by Anne Rice (Knopf: $25.95) A 7-year-old Jesus returns to Nazareth after the death of King Herod and gradually discovers his power to heal and raise the dead.
2. “The Lighthouse,” by P.D. James (Knopf: $25.95) Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh is called to the Cornish coast to solve the murder of an acclaimed novelist who had upset his very prominent neighbors.
3. “The Da Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown (Doubleday: $24.95) A Louvre curator’s killing leads to clues hidden in Leonardo’s paintings and a secret society with something to hide.
4. “The Hostage,” by W.E.B. Griffin (Putnam: $26.95) A Homeland Security agent tries to foil terrorists who have kidnapped a diplomat’s wife to find a man linked to a U.N. oil-for-food program.
5. “S Is for Silence,” by Sue Grafton (Putnam: $26.95) Kinsey Millhone is hired to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared 34 years earlier from a Central California agricultural town.
6. “Mary, Mary,” by James Patterson (Little, Brown: $27.95) FBI Agent Alex Cross seeks the killer of an A-list actress, her chauffeur and a female movie producer as fear sweeps through Hollywood.
7. “The Constant Princess,” by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone: $24.95) Catherine of Aragon endures the loss of a husband, treachery and poverty in her quest to become queen of England.
8. “On Beauty,” by Zadie Smith (Penguin: $25.95) Identity crises, adultery, racial conflict and religious zealotry afflict two families whose lives are a 21st century parallel to E.M. Forster’s “Howards End.”
9. “The Truth About Diamonds,” by Nicole Richie (ReganBooks: $23.95) A rock legend’s adopted daughter, part of Hollywood’s new elite, faces a best friend’s betrayal and a greedy birth father.
10. “All Night Long,” by Jayne Ann Krentz (Putnam: $24.95) A big-city reporter returns to her Napa Valley hometown to find a friend dead and ends up investigating her own parents’ death years earlier.
1. “The Year of Magical Thinking,” by Joan Didion (Knopf: $23.95) The author explores the nature of grief and survival in the months after her writer-husband’s sudden death.
2. “My Friend Leonard,” by James Frey (Penguin: $24.95) The former cocaine addict’s sequel to “A Million Little Pieces” celebrates the mobster who helped him turn his life around.
3. “Bad Childhood, Good Life,” by Laura Schlessinger (HarperCollins: $24.95) How to move past an unhappy childhood, change negative behaviors and thrive.
4. “Marley &Me,” by John Grogan (William Morrow: $21.95) A columnist recalls how Marley, an incorrigible Labrador retriever, flunked obedience school, terrorized a pet sitter and won over his family.
5. “Freakonomics,” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow: $25.95) An economist deconstructs statistics and uses numbers to help explain human behavior.
6. “The World Is Flat,” by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus &Giroux: $27.50) How technology and the forces of globalization are connecting – and changing – the world.
7. “Teacher Man,” by Frank McCourt (Scribner: $26) In his third memoir in a series that began with “Angela’s Ashes,” the Irish immigrant plumbs 30 years of teaching high school English in New York City.
8. “Love Smart,” by Phil McGraw (Free Press: $26) How to take control of your love life, whether it’s finding a mate or holding on to the one you already have.
9. “The Elements of Style Illustrated,” by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White (Penguin Press: $24.95) The classic manual of good writing, updated with fanciful illustrations by Maira Kalman.
10. “Our Endangered Values,” by Jimmy Carter (Simon &Schuster: $25) The former president writes of his concern about the rise in Christian fundamentalism and its influence in politics.
Los Angeles Times
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