BESTSELLERS

*--* SO. CAL. RATING Fiction

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*--* 1 The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (Griffin: $13.95) The travails of an overworked caregiver

2 The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin: $14) A teenage girl is haunted by her mother’s death

3 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Harvest Books: $12) A day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway and her London coterie

4 Atonement by Ian McEwan (Anchor: $14) A haunting novel of guilt and redemption in World War II England

5 The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine: $7.99) Alex Delaware receives a gruesome photo album

6 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (HarperPaperbacks: $13.95) Opera mingles with mayhem in South America

7 The Wailing Wind by Tony Hillerman (HarperPaper- backs: $7.95) A truck and a corpse lead into a web of Navajo lore

8 Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella (Delta: $10.95) A bride-to-be faces the wedding wishes of two mothers

9 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (Anchor: $10) Literary sunshine in a gray communist village

10 Up Country by Nelson DeMille (Warner: $7.99) An Army investigator faces the impossible: solving a 30-year-old murder in the Vietnam War

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*--* SO. CAL. RATING Nonfiction

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*--* 1 Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (Ballantine: $15) How a thoroughbred horse went from also-ran to sports icon

2 Dreaming War by Gore Vidal (Thunder’s Mouth: $11.95) Arguing that greed, not justice, underlies Bush’s focus on Iraq

3 Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution by Robert C. Atkins (Quill: $13.95) How a low-carb diet helps shed pounds

4 What Went Wrong? by Bernard Lewis (HarperPerennial: $12.95) The rise and fall of Islamic culture

5 The No Spin Zone by Bill O’Reilly (Broadway: $14) Insights from the outspoken interviewer’s show on Fox cable

6 Power and Terror by Noam Chomsky (Seven Stories Press: $11.95) Alternatives to militarism and violence

7 The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman (Picador: $13) A pianist’s survival in the Warsaw ghetto in World War II

8 Trading Spaces: Behind the Scenes edited by Brian Kramer (Meredith Books: $19.95) Quick room makeovers

9 Addicted to War by Joel Andreas (AK Press: $8) How war is an inevitable byproduct of the military industrial complex

10 Iraq in a Nutshell by Amanda Roraback (Enisen Publishing: $4.95) A tour of Iraq’s history and people

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