THREE FICTION WINNERS

Three new fall fiction titles land on the national charts this week, including a new Stephen King in the #1 spot -- The Heart of Atlantis is a collection of five interconnected, sequential stories that go from the 1960s to the '90s. Scribner's first printing is 1,350,000. One part of the book's promotion is a Simon & Schuster Audio excerpt on the Internet -- an 18-minute segment read by William Hurt.

In the #10 slot is Dave Barry's first novel, Big Trouble, which has a major blurb on the back cover from the Kingmeister himself, noting that the book is "the funniest thing I've read in almost 40 years." (Another writing colleague, Elmore Leonard, d s a bit of one-upmanship on the inside jacket by noting: "Funniest book I've read in 50 years.") PW's starred review ech d these comments, calling Barry "one of the funniest humorists writing today." Putnam states that Barry is the funniest, noting that other great American humorists like Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker and James Thurber are dead; Woody Allen "hasn't been funny since 1986"; and Steve Martin "is too tall" to qualify. Either way, the publisher made sure the Pulitzer Prize“winning Barry would have a strong fiction debut, launching the title with a 125,000-copy first printing and sending the author on a 19-city bookstore and media tour. TV programs like Today, Charlie Rose and Politically Incorrect were happy to take on the noted humorist, who'll also be doing many local NPR interviews in his cross-country trek.

Landing in the #11 slot is the third new fiction title -- Hard Time, the 10th V.I. Warshawski book by Sara Paretsky. She, too, is doing an extensive tour, stopping in at least 21 cities. Delacorte's first printing was 150,000; the publisher estimates that Paretsky's U.S in-print total exceeds four million.

THESPIAN TOMES

Two well-known faces from movie and TV screens of decades past are attracting strong sales for their tell-all autobiographies. Hitting the chart in the #13 spot is The Million Dollar Mermaid, by Esther Williams, written with the help of L.A. media critic Digby Diehl. Simon & Schuster's four trips back to press have brought the in-print total to 55,000. Crooner Eddie Fisher's Been There, Done That, written with David Fisher (no relation, but a journalist who has worked on other star biographies), is percolating right below our top 15 nonfiction titles. St. Martin's has 65,000 copies in print after three trips to press.

PLOUGH'S FIRST LANDING

By now everyone knows the tragic story behind She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall, the first national bestseller for the Farmington, Pa.-based religion house Plough Publishing. Cassie was one of the students murdered in last April's Columbine High School massacre, and this memoir by her mother, Misty Bernall, is an eloquent look at the events that led to Cassie becoming a martyr figure for Christian groups around the country. Plough was chosen to publish the book because Cassie read some of its titles for inspiration. The publisher has gone back to press twice after a 100,000-copy first printing; in-print total is now 250,000. Plough licensed the Christian bookstore market to Word; total copies for this market is now 100,000.

Y2K, ASKS THIS FARMER

The 208th edition of The Farmer's Almanac continues to be a crowd-pleaser, landing in the #5 spot on PW's trade paper list. Villard's millennium edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac 2000 was launched mid-September with a 230,000-copy first printing and an extensive author tour by editor Judson Hale that includes 175 interviews in more than 15 cities. In addition to weather forecasts, useful advice and recipes, the new edition features a shrinkwrapped replica of the 1900 edition so readers can see what life was like at the turn of the last century. Hale's road show includes appearances on Today, NPR's Morning Edition and CNN's Morning News.