1 / The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown (Doubleday, $24.95)
Biblical conspiracies, symbols, and secrets.

2 / The Rule of Four
Ian Caldwell, Dustin Thomason (Dial, $24)
Intellectual suspense and medieval code cracking.

3 / Ten big ones
Janet Evanovich (St.  Martin's, $25.95)
Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum in her 10th book.

4 / The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Mitch Albom (Hyperion, $19.95)
Life affirming fable from Tuesdays with Morrie author.

5 / The Jane Austen Book Club
Karen Joy Fowler (Putnam, $23.95)
Contemporary comedy of manners set in California.

6 / Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower VI)
Stephen King (Donald M. Grant/Scribner, $30)
The penultimate book in King's Dark Tower saga.

7 / A Good Year
Peter Mayle (Knopf, $24)
Max Skinner chases the good life as a vintner.

8 / The Full Cupboard of Life
Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, $19.95)
More mystery at the No.  1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

9 / Sam's Letters to Jennifer
James Patterson (Little, Brown, $24.95)
A love story from the master of thriller.

10 / The Birth of Venus
Sarah Dunant (Random House, $21.95)
Love and painting in 14th-century Florence.

1 / My Life
Bill Clinton (Knopf, $35)
The 42nd president in his own words.

2 / Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Lynne Truss (Gotham, $17.50)
A handbook for the punctuation police.

3 / Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim
David Sedaris (Little, Brown, $24.95)
Funny & moving family recollections from the NPR star.

4 / The South Beach Diet
Arthur Agatston, M.D. (Rodale, $24.95)
Weight loss from Miami Beach.

5 / Big Russ & Me
Tim Russert (Miramax Books, $22.95)
Lessons in life from Russert's plainspoken father.

6 / Father Joe
Tony Hendra (Random House, $24.95)
How a kind monk befriended a restless young man.

7 / Alexander Hamilton
Ron Chernow (Penguin, $35)
Biography of the first Secretary of the Treasury.

8 / Plan of Attack
Bob Woodward (Simon & Shuster, $28)
An insider's view of the run-up to the Iraq war.

9 / Shadow Divers
Robert Kurson (Random House, $26.95)
Dangerous scuba in a sunken German U-boat.

10 / Founding Mothers
Cokie Roberts (Morrow, $24.95)
A history of the women behind the Founding Fathers.

1 / The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin, $14)
A motherless teenage girl in 1964 South Carolina.

2 / The Curious Incident
of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon (Vintage, $12)
Austistic teenager's bitterly funny view of the world.

3 / The #1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith (Anchor, $11.95)
The detective as folk hero in Botswana.

4 / The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger (Harvest, $14)
Lovers caught in a quirky time-travel dilemma

5 / Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides (Picador, $15)
Kaleidoscopic narrative of three generations of Greek immigrants.

6 / The Known World
Edward P. Jones (Amistad, $13.95)
A slave's-eye view of antebellum Virginia.

7 / Life of Pi
Yann Martel (Harvest, $14)
Magical realist tale of a boy and a tiger adrift at sea.

8 / The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold (Back Bay, $13.95)
The story of a brutally murdered girl narrated from heaven.

9 / The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead, $14)
Afghan culture and politics entwined in a father and son story.

10 / Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy (Penguin, $16)
Classic tale of a woman's choice in 19th-century Russia.

1 / Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi (Random House, $13.95)
Beauty, imagination, & literature under the ayatollahs.

2 / Under the Banner of Heaven
Jon Krakauer (Anchor, $14.95)
The shadowy world of fundamentalist Mormonism.

3 / The Devil in the White City
Eric Larson (Vintage, $14.95)
Murder, magic, & madness at the 1893 World's Fair.

4 / Stupid White Men
Michael Moore (Regan Books, $13.95)
The leftist provocateur skewers the GOP.

5 / The South Beach Diet Good Fats/Good Carbs Counter
Arthur Agatston, M.D. (Rodale, $7.99)
A reference supplement to The South Beach Diet.

6 / Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris (Little, Brown, $14.95)
The monologuist and memoirist in France.

7 / 1,000 Places to See Before You Die
Patricia Schultz (Workman, $18.95)
Offbeat recommendations for the intrepid traveler.

8 / Stiff
Mary Roach (Norton, $13.95)
A social history of cadavers.

9 / Tuesdays With Morrie
Mitch Albom (Broadway, $12.95)
A journalist learns about life from an old professor.

10 / Bushwhacked
Molly Ivins, Lou Dubose (Vintage, $12)
The gimlet-eyed satirist takes on her fellow Texan.

Chronogram's Book Sense bestseller list is compiled from sales data from 450 independent bookstores throughout the United States.  Book Sense is a marketing initiative of the nonprofit American Booksellers Association, an organization through which independently owned bookstores support free speech, literacy, and programs that encourage reading.  Chronogram's list reports sales for the four-week period ending July 13, 2004.  To a find a local independent bookseller near you, visit www.BookSense.com or call (888) BOOK-SENSE.