TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of November 16, 1997

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
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1
COLD MOUNTAIN
Charles Frazier
Cover of COLD MOUNTAIN

COLD MOUNTAIN

by Charles Frazier · Atlantic Monthly Press

18 wks at #1 · 19 on list

The impact of the Civil War on lovers. Inman is not the man he used to be, as wounded in battle he slowly makes his way home to North Carolina. His sweetheart, Ada, too has changed, no longer a flighty belle but a hard-working farm woman. Will love be the same?

2
VIOLIN
Anne Rice
Cover of VIOLIN

VIOLIN

by Anne Rice · Knopf

3 wks on list

A woman from New Orleans steals a violin from a ghost and becomes the musician she always wanted, finding herself acclaimed on two continents. Part fantasy, part reality.

4
FLOOD TIDE
Clive Cussler
Cover of FLOOD TIDE

FLOOD TIDE

by Clive Cussler · Simon & Schuster

7 wks on list

Dirk Pitt faces one of his most formidable foes--a madman bent on killing hundreds of innocent men, women, and children with a catastrophic surge of mass destruction.

5
1
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
Arundhati Roy
Cover of THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

by Arundhati Roy · Random House

14 wks on list

The story of an Indian family during the 1969 Communist disturbances in Kerala province. It is told through the eyes of a boy and his sister who are the children of a rich rubber planter. Politics, family drama, illicit love. A debut in fiction.

6
4
THE LETTER
Richard Paul Evans
Cover of THE LETTER

THE LETTER

by Richard Paul Evans · Simon & Schuster

3 wks on list

The love story of David and MaryAnne Parkin and the storms that their relationship must face when the blissful state of romance vanishes into real-life challenges and difficulties.

8
1
THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS
Caleb Carr
Cover of THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS

THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS

by Caleb Carr · Random House

6 wks on list

In The Angel of Darkness, Caleb Carr brings back the vivid world of his bestselling The Alienist but with a twist: this story is told by the former street urchin Stevie Taggert, whose rough life has given him wisdom beyond his years. Thus New York City, and the groundbreaking alienist Dr. Kreizler himself, are seen anew. It is June 1897. A year has passed since Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a pioneer in forensic psychiatry, tracked down the brutal serial killer John Beecham with the help of a team of trusted companions and a revolutionary application of the principles of his discipline. Kreizler and his friends--high-living crime reporter John Schuyler Moore; indomitable, derringer-toting Sara Howard; the brilliant (and bickering) detective brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; powerful and compassionate Cyrus Montrose; and Stevie Taggert, the boy Kreizler saved from a life of street crime--have returned to their former pursuits and tried to forget the horror of the Beecham case. But when the distraught wife of a Spanish diplomat begs Sara's aid, the team reunites to help find her kidnapped infant daughter. It is a case fraught with danger, since Spain and the United States are on the verge of war. Their investigation leads the team to a shocking suspect: a woman who appears to the world to be a heroic nurse and a loving mother, but who may in reality be a ruthless murderer of children. Once again, Caleb Carr proves his brilliant ability to re-create the past, both high life and low. As the horror unfolds, Delmonico's still serves up wondrous meals, and a summer trip to the elegant gambling parlors of Saratoga provides precious keys to the murderer's past. At the same time, we go onrevealing journeys into Stevie's New York, a place where poor and neglected children--then as now--turn to crime and drugs at shockingly early ages. Peppered throughout are characters taken from real life and rendered with historical vigor, including suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton; painter Albert Pinkham Ryder; and Clarence Darrow, who thunders for the defense in a tense courtroom drama during which the sanctity of American motherhood itself is put on trial. Fast-paced and chilling, The Angel of Darkness is a tour de force, a novel of modern evil in old New York.

10
3
UNDERWORLD
Don DeLillo
Cover of UNDERWORLD

UNDERWORLD

by Don DeLillo · Scribner

8 wks on list
11
NEW
COMANCHE MOON
Larry McMurtry
Cover of COMANCHE MOON

COMANCHE MOON

by Larry McMurtry · Simon & Schuster

1 wks on list

Two Texas Rangers fight Indians and bandits while trying to sort affairs with their women. One is Gus McCrae, a hard-drinking womanizer jilted by his love, the other is sober Woodrow Call, father of a boy by a prostitute. By the author of Lonesome Dove.

12
NEW
LUCKY YOU
Carl Hiaasen
Cover of LUCKY YOU

LUCKY YOU

by Carl Hiaasen · Knopf

1 wks on list

JoLayne Luck enlists the help of investigative journalist Tom Krone to chase down Bodean Gazzer and his sidekick Chub, the two men who stole JoLayne's winning lottery ticket in order to set up their own underground militia group in Florida.

13
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
Arthur Golden

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.