On a list where longevity rules, three trade paperback bestsellers have bowed in the last few weeks. Marking three weeks on the charts is Clive Cussler's Golden Buddha, first in the Oregon Files series written with Craig Dirgo. Berkley has 450,000 copies in print. Cussler fans can look forward to his next Dirk Pitt novel, Trojan Odyssey, in late November from Putnam, followed in December by Berkley's mass market of Sea Hunters II.

Novelist Ben Mezrich hit the big time with his nonfiction debut, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. The hardcover has about 130,000 copies in print and Free Press already boasts 175,000 copies for the new trade paperback after six trips to press. Kevin Spacey optioned the film rights for his Trigger Street Productions.

Philip Roth's 2001 title, The Human Stain, gets a boost onto the charts via the movie version, starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, which just hit the screens. Vintage reports that copies in print before the film's release totaled 200,000; the current figure is 325,000.

—With reporting by Dick Donahue