Michel Faber

When Michel Faber finished his first novel, "The Crimson Petal and the White," a dozen years ago, he did what he always did with his writing: He stuck it in a drawer. Faber had spent eight years scribbling a rich and lovingly detailed story about a 19th century hooker and her rise through London society, but he couldn't afford to hire a typist to turn his longhand chapters into a manuscript suitable to submit to a publisher.

Thank goodness for Eve. Yes, the apple business got us thrown out of paradise. But the way that her descendants have helped poor men through the centuries shows that a rib for a woman is a very good trade (heck, it's a steal). Like the prostitute Sugar in Michel Faber's bestselling novel "The Crimson Petal and the White," the women of his "The Courage Consort" are thoughtful, injured, delicate -- they dwell in the depths of sensitivity while their male counterparts flap about on the surface.

LIGHT HOUSE By William Monahan; Riverhead: 224 pp., $21.95 "Art isn't about talent anymore. It's about Sincerity." Thus is Tim Picasso, the precocious art student at the heart of William Monahan's mad (and maddening) farce of a first novel, rudely informed by one of his envious, underachieving professors.

*--* SO. CAL. RATING Fiction LAST WEEK WEEKS ON LIST *--* *--* 1 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown: $21.95) 1 29 A murdered girl tells the story of her grieving family still learning to cope, the killer and the detective who hunts him 2 Prey by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins: $26.95) A foray 2 7 into the chilling world of nanotechnology as a programmer tries to stop a destructive swarm of tiny machines 3 I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson (Alfred 8 13 A.

*--* SO. CAL. RATING Fiction LAST WEEK WEEKS ON LIST *--* *--* 1 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown: $21.95) 1 29 A murdered girl tells the story of her grieving family still learning to cope, the killer and the detective who hunts him 2 Prey by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins: $26.95) A foray 2 7 into the chilling world of nanotechnology as a programmer tries to stop a destructive swarm of tiny machines 3 I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson (Alfred 8 13 A.

Thank goodness for Eve. Yes, the apple business got us thrown out of paradise. But the way that her descendants have helped poor men through the centuries shows that a rib for a woman is a very good trade (heck, it's a steal). Like the prostitute Sugar in Michel Faber's bestselling novel "The Crimson Petal and the White," the women of his "The Courage Consort" are thoughtful, injured, delicate -- they dwell in the depths of sensitivity while their male counterparts flap about on the surface.

F.L.: Fritz Lang: His Life and Work, Photographs and Documents, Edited by Rolf Aurich, Wolfgang Jacobsen and Cornelius Schnauber, Jovis: 512 pp., $50 DAVID LEAN: An Intimate Portrait, By Sandy Lean with Barry Chattington, Universe: 244 pp., $45 THE HITCHCOCK MURDERS, By Peter Conrad, Faber & Faber: 362 pp., $25 Aside from a few malcontents over at the Writers Guild, we are all auteurists now. The reason is self-evident: Directors are responsible for the movieness of movies.

----- Radical Hope Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation Jonathan Lear Harvard University Press: 208 pp., $22.95 PLENTY COUPS, "the last great chief of the Crow nation," had a vision that spared his tribe many (not all) of the humiliations suffered by other tribes at the hands of the American government and from environmental degradation. Jonathan Lear believes that all Westerners face similar threats of cultural collapse and resource scarcity.

Harvey and Louis M. Jason opened Mystery Pier Books in 1998 intending to specialize in first-edition mysteries. But the focus broadened to "the 19th to 20th century big ones" when the father-and-son duo saw how visitors to their Sunset Strip rare-book emporium zeroed in on Steinbeck, Hemingway and Faulkner. "We're a nation of collectors," says Harvey. "We're also a nation of investors. Books appreciate more quickly than paintings or sculpture; unlike the stock market, there's no risk."

When Michel Faber finished his first novel, "The Crimson Petal and the White," a dozen years ago, he did what he always did with his writing: He stuck it in a drawer. Faber had spent eight years scribbling a rich and lovingly detailed story about a 19th century hooker and her rise through London society, but he couldn't afford to hire a typist to turn his longhand chapters into a manuscript suitable to submit to a publisher.

F.L.: Fritz Lang: His Life and Work, Photographs and Documents, Edited by Rolf Aurich, Wolfgang Jacobsen and Cornelius Schnauber, Jovis: 512 pp., $50 DAVID LEAN: An Intimate Portrait, By Sandy Lean with Barry Chattington, Universe: 244 pp., $45 THE HITCHCOCK MURDERS, By Peter Conrad, Faber & Faber: 362 pp., $25 Aside from a few malcontents over at the Writers Guild, we are all auteurists now. The reason is self-evident: Directors are responsible for the movieness of movies.

LIGHT HOUSE By William Monahan; Riverhead: 224 pp., $21.95 "Art isn't about talent anymore. It's about Sincerity." Thus is Tim Picasso, the precocious art student at the heart of William Monahan's mad (and maddening) farce of a first novel, rudely informed by one of his envious, underachieving professors.