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), Publisher's Weekly (general bookstores), and Amazon.com (Web purchases). 1 The Fourth Hand John Irving

33 points (NYT: 5th; ABA: 1st; PW: 3rd; Amazon.com: 2nd)

GIST A bizarre but well-told story of a philandering reporter who eventually loses his transplanted hand, but ends up with a new heart as a result of love. This occurs in a totally amoral setting: Nothing is really right or wrong.

CAUTION Obscenities, profanities, and licentious activities.

29 points (NYT: 1st; ABA: 2nd; PW: 1st; Amazon.com: not listed)

GIST Patterson takes a break from suspense novels to write a formulaic romance, with stock characters such as the house painter who's really a poet, the book editor who hasn't forgotten her country roots, the jilted lover who's pregnant, the minister who has grown to preach the love of God rather than the fear of God, and the saintly, sickly wife. Treacle and tissues.

CAUTION N/A

28 points (NYT: 2nd; ABA: 9th; PW: 4th; Amazon.com: 1st)

GIST French plantation owners sometimes raped Tademy's ancestors and sometimes loved them. Fathers often acknowledged their offspring, but law and culture kept them from legitimizing them. So from generation to generation, the women's perseverance, cunning, and cussedness enabled them to grab hold of some land and build a future.

CAUTION N/A

17 points (NYT: 3rd; ABA: not listed; PW: 2nd; Amazon.com: not listed)

GIST Man (in the generic sense) is merely a beast, seeking pleasure where he can find it. The book tries to dress the beast in fancy clothes and chic occupations, but nothing can alter the fact that the book is still about beasts playing dress-up.

CAUTION Foul language, explicit sex, nasty worldview.

15 points (NYT: not listed; ABA: 3rd; PW: not listed; Amazon.com: 4th)

GIST Traitor to Memory is the 11th book in a series featuring New Scotland Yard Detective Thomas Lynley, his coarse sidekick Barbara Havers, and numerous sexually deviant characters. The author's 700-page exploration of repressed memories yields little ore.

CAUTION Graphic sex and foul language.

Nestled amid the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina lies the fictional hamlet of Hamelin, Tennessee. Novelist Sharyn McCrumb sets there a series of novels-part mystery, part Appalachian folklore-of which The Songcatcher (Dutton, 2001) is the latest. The Songcatcher is a lyrical tale about an old song and the modern-day folksinger who wants to find it. She's estranged from her father and rarely comes back to Hamelin, a place she was all too ready to escape for the attractions of the big city, but her dad's ill health brings her back and sets in motion the present-day plot. Interwoven with one story of plane crash and wilderness rescue is another tale: of a song and the generations that carried it from Scotland to America, from New Jersey to the mountains of North Carolina. The song became a legacy from one generation to the next, connecting even those who left the mountains with the heritage and lives of those who stayed behind.