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AMAZON.COM DELIVERS
BOOK BESTSELLERS: TOP 10 OF 1999

Editor, Tim Appelo

Here's a list that attempts to do the impossible: pick the best of Amazon.com's 1999 bestsellers. That's a lot of waterfront to cover--biographies, hot novels, laugh-out-loud humor, newsmaking nonfiction, the most absorbing books in science, art, sports, and the fine art of literary murder. The editors' debate was heated and delightful. Did Hannibal Lecter go too far this time? Is Edmund Morris a madman, a genius, or a bit of both? Those two and other highly popular works didn't make the cut, and at last the Bestsellers editors settled on 10 books we enthusiastically recommend.

1. "Personal Injuries"
by Scott Turow
Turow, a real-life lawyer as well as a legal-thriller author, worked on an FBI sting in Chicago, and his latest book is the most original and authentic undercover-operation novel in some time, a plunge into the mystery of human identity. Read more

Our Price: $13.50 | You Save: $13.50 (50%)   


2. "'Tis: A Memoir"
by Frank McCourt
The plucky, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Angela's Ashes" tells the ripping true yarn about how he escaped the slums of Limerick, Ireland, in 1949 and discovered America--a place where a teen can't take pig's feet and a bottle of stout into a movie theater as he did back home, and the bartender at Costello's sends him straight to the New York Public Library with stern orders not to come back for a pint until he's read "The Lives of the English Poets." In a time when memoirs are ascendant, nobody's riding higher than McCourt. Read more

Our Price: $13.00 | You Save: $13.00 (50%)   


3. "Hearts in Atlantis"
by Stephen King
The vanished small-town world of a 1960s childhood collides with King's otherworldly Dark Tower fantasy series in the haunting, magical novella that opens this ambitious collection of five linked stories. The title tale is about college kids obsessively playing the card game Hearts while Vietnam rages and Donovan croons his silly, catchy song about a sunken continent. Ranging from realism to horror, King tries to go way down and rediscover in fiction the truth about his generation. Read more

Our Price: $14.00 | You Save: $14.00 (50%)   


4. "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory"
by Brian Greene
Modern physics has a dirty little secret: general relativity and quantum mechanics are each true as far as they go--but they can't both be true! Greene does the best job yet of sketching what we long for: the "theory of everything" that will explain what in the world is going on. Read more

Our Price: $19.57 | You Save: $8.38 (30%)   


5. "Women"
by Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag
Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone photographer Annie Leibovitz's perceptive lens captures an array of women--everyone from coal miners, national leaders, astronauts, hookers, and celebrities to little kids with Barbie dolls. The shots of Vegas showgirls before and after their stage transformation are worth the price of the book, as is Susan Sontag's ruminative essay. Read more

Our Price: $45.00 | You Save: $30.00 (40%)   


6. "Disgrace"
by J.M. Coetzee
Only one writer in history has ever won the supremely prestigious Booker Prize twice: J.M. Coetzee, this time for his searing new masterpiece about a cruel seducer in South Africa brought face-to-face with amorous scandal and his nation's painful past. Read more

Our Price: $16.77 | You Save: $7.18 (30%)   


7. "'O' Is for Outlaw"
by Sue Grafton
Detective Kinsey Millhone opens a Pandora's box of personal secrets: a storage locker belonging to her mysterious, long-lost ex-husband and containing clues to his life and a scary conspiracy. Millhone has always been secretive about her first marriage, but now she has to explore her past and catch up with some old friends before somebody gets killed. Grafton's usual virtues--fast pace and clever plotting-- never fail, but she adds a new emotional depth in her tricky attempt to dramatize a central character who can't speak for himself. Read more

Our Price: $13.00 | You Save: $13.00 (50%)   


8. "And the Crowd Goes Wild"
by Joe Garner, Bob Costas, et al.
Savor the most triumphant moments in sports history with this book-and-CD set. Babe's homer, the "Immaculate Reception," Secretariat's gallop--it's all here, with color commentary by Hank Aaron, Wayne Gretzky, and Bob Costas. Read more

Our Price: $24.98 | You Save: $24.97 (50%)   


9. "Big Trouble"
by Dave Barry
In the fictional debut of Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry, Miami's Jolly Jackal Bar & Grill turns out to be a front for unloading stolen Russian nukes. Can a hapless dad, a couple of love-struck teens, a courageous cop, and a saintly homeless guy beat the menace of the Mob, not to mention hallucinogenic toads? It's a racy mystery on a par with Florida's finest, adding depth of character to Barry's gift for gags. But one warning: if you read this book while drinking milk, at some point it will spurt out of your nostrils. Read more

Our Price: $14.37 | You Save: $9.58 (40%)   


10. "Woman: An Intimate Geography"
by Natalie Angier
Is there a wittier science writer than The New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning Natalie Angier? And can there be a more absorbing subject than the physical (and emotional and mental and cultural and molecular) nature of women? Angier's erudition is awesome, and she's written a masterful work of popular science in "Woman." Read more

Our Price: $15.00 | You Save: $10.00 (40%)   

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