Best bets

1. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. (Amy Einhorn/Putnam, $24.95.) A young white woman and two black maids in 1960s Mississippi.

2. THE LOST SYMBOL, by Dan Brown. (Doubleday, $29.95.) Robert Langdon among the Masons.

3. NOAH'S COMPASS, by Anne Tyler. (Knopf, $25.95.) A retired teacher with a head injury struggles to regain his memory and his engagement in life.

4. IMPACT, by Douglas Preston. (Forge, $25.99.) Scientists race to defuse a doomsday weapon pointed at Earth from one of the moons of Mars.

5. I, ALEX CROSS, by James Patterson. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Tracking the murderer of a relative, Alex Cross discovers a wild Washington scene with explosive secrets.

6. THE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central, $24.99.) A 17-year-old girl spends the summer with her divorced father in North Carolina and there finds many kinds of love.

7. DEEPER THAN THE DEAD, by Tami Hoag. (Dutton, $26.95.) An FBI investigator and a teacher track a series of murders in California in 1985.

9. THE HONOR OF SPIES, by W.E.B. Griffin and William Butterworth IV. (Putnam, $26.95.) An OSS agent seeks information from a German prisoner of war; the fifth book in the Honor Bound series.

10(x). UNDER THE DOME, by Stephen King. (Scribner, $35.) When a Maine town is trapped by an invisible force field, a sanctimonious and hypocritical politician takes over.

1. COMMITTED, by Elizabeth Gilbert. (Viking, $26.95.) The author of "Eat, Pray, Love" wrestles with, and overcomes, her ambivalence about marriage.

2. HAVE A LITTLE FAITH, by Mitch Albom. (Hyperion, $23.99.) A suburban rabbi and a Detroit pastor teach lessons about the comfort of belief.

3. THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO, by Atul Gawande. (Metropolitan/Holt, $24.50.) Following checklists makes surgery safer and other activities more efficient, a doctor argues.

5. STONES INTO SCHOOLS, by Greg Mortenson. (Viking, $26.95.) Building schools, many of them for girls, in northeast Afghanistan; takes up where "Three Cups of Tea" left off.

6(x). OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Why some people succeed, from the author of "Blink."

7. SUPERFREAKONOMICS, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $29.99.) A scholar and a journalist apply economic thinking to everything: the sequel.

8. WHAT THE DOG SAW, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) A decade of New Yorker essays.

9. DRIVE, by Daniel Pink. (Riverhead, $26.95.) What really motivates people is the quest for autonomy, mastery and purpose, not external rewards.

1. THE MAYO CLINIC DIET, by the Mayo Clinic staff. (Good Books, $25.99.) Adopting healthy new habits and breaking unhealthy old ones.

2. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, by Gretchen Rubin. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99.) A year spent focusing on the things that really matter.

3. YOU: ON A DIET, by Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz et al. (Free Press, $26.99.) Weight-loss tips and recipes; a revised edition.

4. THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK, by Timothy Ferriss. (Crown, $22.) Reconstructing your life so that it's not all about work.

5(x). MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING, VOL. 1, by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. (Knopf, $40.) A reissue of the book that started Julia Child's career.