| 1. |
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim: Essays
by David Sedaris
price: $24.95
With Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris returns to his deliciously twisted domain: hilarious childhood dramas infused with melancholy; the gulf of misunderstanding that exists between people of different nations or members of the same family; and the poignant divide between one's best hopes and most common deeds. |  |
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| 2. |
The DaVinci Code
by Dan Brown
price: $24.95
In an exhilarating blend of scholarly intelligence, relentless adventure, and cutting wit, Robert Langdon (first introduced in "Angels Demons") and his new adventure combines the punch of Robert Ludlum, the intriguing historical touch of Umberto Eco, and the nonstop suspense of Michael Crichton. |  |
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| 3. |
My Life
by Bill Clinton
price: $35.00
In what is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year, My Life is a "riveting personal drama as well as a fascinating look a the American political arena," chronicling Clinton's life through his White House years. |  |
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| 4. |
The Rule of Four
by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
price: $24.00
A stunning first novel in the vein of Umberto Ecco and Dan Brown. Two friends find the key to the labyrinth that holds the secrets of an ancient text called the "Hypnerotomachia." But when a fellow researcher is murdered, they suddenly realize they are caught in a web of great danger.
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| 5. |
Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency
by Senator Robert C. Byrd
price: $23.95
The Senator argues that now is the time to regain the Constitution, to return to the values and processes that made America great, and to speak the truth to an increasingly aggressive and imperial White House. |  |
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| 6. |
The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition
by George McGovern
price: $20.00
Liberalism is the oldest and most enduring
American tradition, a philosophy and way of life we inherited from the
Founding Fathers. This is the central idea of The Essential America by George McGovern, America's best-known (and most consistent) liberal. |  |
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| 7. |
Keeping School: Letters to Families from Principals of Two Small Schools
by Theodore R. Sizer and Deborah Meier
price: $23.00
Sharp and accessible but intellectually ambitious, these little essays talk about everything from homework to discipline, from academic expectations to reading for pleasure. |  |
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| 8. |
The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean
by Trevor Corson
price: $24.95
In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and an eccentric band of renegade biologists, Corson escorts the reader onto slippery fishing boats and on treacherous scuba dives to learn about lobsters--who prove to be a masters of the boudoir, lethal boxers, snoopy socialites and underwater bloodhounds. |  |
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| 9. |
R Is for Ricochet
by Sue Grafton
price: $26.95
After five dark and gritty mysteries, Grafton changes tone, giving readers a lighthearted novel about a complex and clever money-laundering scheme. |  |
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| 10. |
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
by Lynne Truss
price: $17.50
This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with. |  |
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Bestselling Paperback Titles
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| 1. |
The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back
by Gloria Feldt
price: $12.00
From her unique perspective as the leader of Planned Parenthood, America's largest reproductive health care and advocacy organization, Gloria Feldt describes the shocking truth about the right wing's attempt to turn back the clock on women's rights.
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| 2. |
The 9/11 Commisson Report: The Full Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
by National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
price: $10.00
This volume is the authorized edition of the Commission's final report. This independent, bipartisan panel was directed to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks, identify lessons learned, and provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism. |  |
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| 3. |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
price: $12.00
Christopher John Francis Boone relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating novels in recent years. "Think of The Sound and the Fury crossed with The Catcher in the Rye and one of Oliver Sacks's real-life stories." -The New York Times |  |
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| 4. |
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
price: $12.00
Expanding on her signature themes of the immigrant experience, the clash of culture, and the tangled ties of generations, Lahiri brings to her terrifically poignant first novel the remarkable powers of emotion and insight that have drawn more than half a million readers to her debut story collection. |  |
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| 5. |
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
by Azar Nafisi
price: $13.95
The luminous memoir of an inspired teacher who defied Islamic morality squads to teach forbidden Western classics in Iran. |  |
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| 6. |
The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms
by The Paris Review
price: $15.00
This ingeniously useful compendium--organized to suit whatever time that the reader has available at that moment--offers reading material to fill those gray, in-between moments in life with beauty, wonder, insight, and emotion. |  |
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| 7. |
The Dante Club
by Matthew Pearl
price: $13.95
A magnificent blend of fact and fiction, a brilliantly realized paean to Dante, his mythic genius, and his continuing grip on the artistic imagination. “[A] carefully plotted, imaginatively shaped, and stylistically credible whodunit of unusual class and intellect.” —The Boston Globe
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| 8. |
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
price: $15.00
Spanning eight decades, Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. Eugenides was named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker. |  |
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| 9. |
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
by Victoria Finlay
price: $14.95
Discover the tantalizing true stories behind your favorite colors.
For example: Cleopatra used saffron--a source of the color yellow--for seduction. Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue "ultramarine" paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn't afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine red--still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke today--has come from the blood of insects. |  |
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| 10. |
Platform
by Michel Houellebecq
price: $13.00
Michel Renault is a human void. On a group holiday in Thailand, however, he meets the shyly compelling Valérie, who soon pursues an agenda that Michel himself could never have thought possible: his own humanization. |  |
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* This list reflects overall sales for the week July 19 - 25, 2004.Back to this week's bestsellers
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