New York Times Bestsellers September 26, 2010

2009-10-20T15:35:00.084-04:00

Hardcover Fiction
1 FREEDOM, by Jonathan Franzen. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) A family of Midwestern liberals during the Bush years; by the author of “The Corrections.”
2 THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson. (Knopf, $27.95.) The third volume of a trilogy about a Swedish hacker and a journalist.
3 NO MERCY, by Sherrilyn Kenyon. (St. Martin’s, $24.99.) Book 19 of the Dark-Hunter paranormal series.
4 GETTING TO HAPPY, by Terry McMillan. (Viking, $27.95.) Revisiting the four women from “Waiting to Exhale,” 15 years later.
5 THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. (Amy Einhorn/Putnam, $24.95.) A young white woman and two black maids in 1960s Mississippi.
6* THE POSTCARD KILLERS, by James Patterson and Liza Marklund. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) An N.Y.P.D. detective joins a Swedish reporter in a search for the killer of young couples in Europe, including his daughter and her boyfriend.
LOST EMPIRE, by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood. (Putnam, $27.95.) Sam and Remi Fargo, a husband-and-wife treasure-hunting team, pursue an important relic.
8 APE HOUSE, by Sara Gruen. (Spiegel & Grau, $26.) Bonobos disappear from a research laboratory and turn up on reality TV, to the consternation of a scientist who studies them; from the author of “Water for Elephants.”
9* ZERO HISTORY, by William Gibson. (Putnam, $26.95.) Several characters from “Spook Country” return to a viral marketing and coolhunting agency; from the author of “Pattern Recognition” and “Neuromancer.”
10 DARK PERIL, by Christine Feehan. (Berkley, $25.95.) A Dragonseeker on a deadly mission; a Carpathian novel.

Hardcover Nonfiction
1 THE GRAND DESIGN, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. (Bantam, $28.) Central questions of philosophy and science, from the author of “A Brief History of Time.”
2 CRIMES AGAINST LIBERTY, by David Limbaugh. (Regnery, $29.95.) A political indictment of the Obama presidency.
3 A JOURNEY, by Tony Blair. (Knopf, $35.) A memoir by the former British prime minister.
4 _____ MY DAD SAYS, by Justin Halpern. (It Books/HarperCollins, $15.99.) A coming-of-age memoir organized around the musings, purveyed on Twitter, of the author’s father.
5 THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS, by Isabel Wilkerson. (Random House, $30.) The Great Migration of blacks who fled the South, starting in 1915.
6 OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Why some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunity — from the author of “Blink.”
7 THE BIG SHORT, by Michael Lewis. (Norton, $27.95.) The people who saw the real estate crash coming and made billions from their foresight.
8 EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON, by S. C. Gwynne. (Scribner, $27.50.) The story of Quanah Parker, the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.
9 BOB DYLAN IN AMERICA, by Sean Wilentz. (Doubleday, $28.95.) Dylan’s music in the context of its time.
10 THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, by Rebecca Skloot. (Crown, $26.) The story of a woman whose cancer cells were cultured without her permission in 1951.