John Grisham

Author John Grisham's good friend, novelist Stephen King, once gave what Mr. Grisham considers some very sound advice about selling a best-selling book to the movie industry."

tuesday The Associate: by John Grisham (Doubleday, $27.95). Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle McAvoy becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed. A Darker Place : by Jack Higgins (Putnam, $26.95). Famous Russian writer and ex-paratrooper Alexander Kurb- sky is fed up with the Putin government and decides he wants to "disappear" into the West.

John Grisham still gets up early, enjoying the unhurried pace and quiet, blissful moments on his 70-acre farm outside Oxford, Miss. He still begins writing at 6, before the distractions can pull him away from the work at hand.But now he does not have to cut his writing short to head to the law office and a 10-hour day. No longer do family life and a daytime job vie for his time and energy, giving him but an hour here or there to work on his book. No longer does he wonder if anyone will ever see the novel in print.

Look for veteran radio and television newsman Tom Lattanzi to be in the crowd at this morning's Waverly Farmers' Market, where he's a fruit and vegetable shopper with his wife of 33 years, Karen. These days Lattanzi represents Screenvision Direct, a business that places 30-second ad spots on the screens of movie theaters before a feature film begins. "We love attending the festivals in the city and visiting neighborhoods such as Hampden, where our daughter, Chiari, won the Miss Hon contest in 2000," he said.

They're fixing again!Oh, I love it when they fix! Here's John Grisham's "The Firm," a huge, huge, megahuge best seller that has delighted and transfixed millions of readers the globe over. And here's Sydney Pollack, whose last film, "Havana," was a megabomb of staggering proportions.Obviously, Grisham doesn't know what he's doing. Obviously, Grisham's millions of readers don't know what they're reading.Obviously, Pollack has to "fix" the story. The result leaves us a long way from Terra Firma.

COVESVILLE, Va. -- On a recent drizzly Saturday, players smacked baseballs in batting cages and spectators sat under colorful awnings, watching children play game after game of baseball on fields worthy of the pros. Here, in the jagged foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains southwest of Charlottesville, a 45-year-old multimillionaire novelist has built his field of dreams: a $3.8 million, seven diamond ballpark for kids. John Grisham, author of such best sellers as "The Firm" and "The Client," completed Cove Creek Park to accolades in 1996 and the park keeps growing.

"The Rainmaker" is the best John Grisham movie ever.But it's still a John Grisham movie.Chock-full of funky characters, blessed with a terrific cast and perked up with ironic humor, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation is the most lively version of Grisham's best-selling pulp to date, one that countervails the author's tiresome righteousness with an undercurrent of cheerful sleaze.But about two-thirds of the way through, the audience is reminded that this is, after all, John Grisham. The author's long arm reaches in to snatch away the bonhomie of "The Rainmaker" and bludgeons the audience with his trademark mawkishness, simple-mindedness and defense of spiraling litigation.

"The Rainmaker," By John Grisham. I like Grisham.Jason Pappas, bartender at the Charles Village Pub and third-year law student at the University of Maryland.

John Grisham's "The Pelican Brief." I still think his first one, "A Time to Kill," is the best of them all.- Julie Simon, bartender at the Brass Elephant restaurant, Baltimore@

Fans of mystery writer Sue Grafton are snapping up the latest of her alphabet mysteries, " 'J' is for Judgment."But for another group of book lovers, the Grafton title to have is her first, " 'A' is for Alibi," and they're willing to pay up to $1,000 for a 1982 first edition in mint condition.A thousand dollars? For a Sue Grafton mystery?Hard to believe? How about $600 for Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire"? Or $700 for Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October"?Instead of crumbling manuscripts or leather-bound classics, books published in the last two decades or even the last two months -- so-called hypermoderns -- are the choice of a new generation of collectors.

Playing for Pizza By John Grisham Doubleday/ 272 pages/ $21.95 In Playing for Pizza, John Grisham leaves the confines of the courtroom for the NFL locker room. The pairing of the master of the legal thriller and America's most popular professional sports league would seem to be a marriage made in bestseller heaven. Perhaps he'd craft a potboiler about a star quarterback involved in illegal dog-fighting and gambling. Or a story about a retired Hall of Fame running back who'd beaten double-murder charges only later to becharged with armed robbery.

National best sellers from data gathered and reported by Publishers Weekly. The number in parentheses indicates last week's position and may be greater than 10 as PW lists the top 15. Fiction . Weeks on list 1. (1) The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown 38 2. (2) The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom 11 3. (3) The Big Bad Wolf, James Patterson 3 4. (4) Trojan Odyssey, Clive Cussler 2 5. (5) Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5), Stephen King 5 6. (6) Shepherds Abiding, Jan Karon 7 7. (10)

COVESVILLE, Va. -- On a recent drizzly Saturday, players smacked baseballs in batting cages and spectators sat under colorful awnings, watching children play game after game of baseball on fields worthy of the pros. Here, in the jagged foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains southwest of Charlottesville, a 45-year-old multimillionaire novelist has built his field of dreams: a $3.8 million, seven diamond ballpark for kids. John Grisham, author of such best sellers as "The Firm" and "The Client," completed Cove Creek Park to accolades in 1996 and the park keeps growing.

"The Rainmaker" is the best John Grisham movie ever.But it's still a John Grisham movie.Chock-full of funky characters, blessed with a terrific cast and perked up with ironic humor, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation is the most lively version of Grisham's best-selling pulp to date, one that countervails the author's tiresome righteousness with an undercurrent of cheerful sleaze.But about two-thirds of the way through, the audience is reminded that this is, after all, John Grisham. The author's long arm reaches in to snatch away the bonhomie of "The Rainmaker" and bludgeons the audience with his trademark mawkishness, simple-mindedness and defense of spiraling litigation.

WASHINGTON -- John Grisham is standing in the middle of the lobby at the Hay-Adams Hotel, but he is not the writer you have come to see. The writer you want walks in a few minutes later and glances at his best-selling comrade-in-letters."

HOLLYWOOD -- The head of a major movie studio sighed deeply yesterday morning as he surveyed the box-office wreckage of the past two weeks. "I'm scared," he said. "The business is frightening."What's frightening more than one studio executive is the failure of so many recent releases, films that have appeared and disappeared almost with the flicker of an eye. Rarely has Hollywood seen seven or eight films, opening over two weekends, collapse without a trace."Everything is in free fall," said Tom Sherak, senior vice president of 20th Century Fox, who blames competition from the Summer Olympics for the disastrous box-office returns.

National best sellers from data gathered and reported by Publishers Weekly. The number in parentheses indicates last week's position and may be greater than 10 as PW lists the top 15. Fiction . Weeks on list 1. (1) The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown 38 2. (2) The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom 11 3. (3) The Big Bad Wolf, James Patterson 3 4. (4) Trojan Odyssey, Clive Cussler 2 5. (5) Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5), Stephen King 5 6. (6) Shepherds Abiding, Jan Karon 7 7. (10)

Look for veteran radio and television newsman Tom Lattanzi to be in the crowd at this morning's Waverly Farmers' Market, where he's a fruit and vegetable shopper with his wife of 33 years, Karen. These days Lattanzi represents Screenvision Direct, a business that places 30-second ad spots on the screens of movie theaters before a feature film begins. "We love attending the festivals in the city and visiting neighborhoods such as Hampden, where our daughter, Chiari, won the Miss Hon contest in 2000," he said.

"The Rainmaker," By John Grisham. I like Grisham.Jason Pappas, bartender at the Charles Village Pub and third-year law student at the University of Maryland.

John Grisham's "The Pelican Brief." I still think his first one, "A Time to Kill," is the best of them all.- Julie Simon, bartender at the Brass Elephant restaurant, Baltimore@