Bestsellers

Scoring system:10 points for first place, 9 for second, down to 1 for 10th, on the lists of the American Booksellers Association (independent, sometimes highbrow stores), The New York Times (4,000 bookstores, plus wholesalers), USA Today (3,000 large-inventory bookstores), and Amazon.com (web purchases). 1 Drowning Ruth Christina Schwarz

36 points (ABA:3rd; NYT: 1st; USA Today: 3rd; Amazon.com: 1st)

GIST When Matilda's husband Carl returns from WWI, no one can tell him how his wife drowned or why she was living on an isolated island during winter. His young daughter has a memory of drowning also, but she's alive. And the sister/aunt isn't talking because she's hiding secrets of her own, which threaten to explode in the present.

WORLDVIEW Soap "Oprah" fatalism.

CAUTION N/A

27 points (ABA: 6th; NYT: 2nd; USA Today: 4th; Amazon.com: 5th)

GIST Taylor McAden is often first on the scene and willing to take the greatest risks. But his personal life is a mess; he's haunted by the death of his father when he was 9. When he meets Denise Holton he falls in love but demons from his past threaten to sabotage his future once again.

WORLDVIEW Sentimental.

CAUTION Sexual situations.

25 points (ABA: 7th; NYT: 3rd; USA Today: 6th; Amazon.com: 3rd)

GIST Instability in China and a mysterious missile attack/ possible assassination attempt in Russia, plus the discovery of vast quantities of Russian oil and gold, lead the two nations to war and the world to the brink of nuclear destruction.

WORLDVIEW Conservative materialism.

CAUTION Language, sexual situations.

20 points (ABA: 9th; NYT: 6th; USA Today: 7th; Amazon.com: 2nd)

GIST Mirabelle holds on to a meaningless job with the help of anti-depressants. She drifts in and out of a two-year affair with a well-heeled businessman in this story of depression, meaninglessness, and modern-day love. Martin's characters never become more than well-described mannequins on a well-decorated stage.

WORLDVIEW Everything under the sun is meaningless.

CAUTION Language, sexual situations.

15 points (ABA: 2nd; NYT: not listed; USA Today: 5th; Amazon.com: not listed)

GIST The females embrace the interconnectivity of all creation, but the males fear it and try to control the natural world with guns, chemicals, and "god." All attempts to control the world are ineffective, and wisdom is realizing that mankind is just one thread in the fabric of life.

WORLDVIEW Feminist pantheism.

CAUTION Sexual situations.

In his preface to A Personal Odyssey (Free Press 2000), Thomas Sowell promises that the book will not "try to cover a continuous lifespan or to tell an exhaustive story." If only it had! Mr. Sowell is one of the most influential economists of our time, a black American who rose from poverty in North Carolina to academic heights at Stanford. The journey included growing up in Harlem, serving a stint in the Marines during the Korean War, and studying at Harvard. Mr. Sowell has no shortage of interesting anecdotes to tell, but readers looking for heavy introspection will be disappointed. The narrative is often frustratingly distant from his personal life, and details needed to understand this important thinker are absent. What's left is a well-written collection of some of Mr. Sowell's struggles against the stereotypes and assumptions foisted on blacks in the academic world, especially by liberals, along with some tantalizing glimpses into his personal life that leave the reader wanting to know more.