• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
• Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

For book publishers, the most provocative question raised by the upcoming movie version of "The Da Vinci Code" is: Can a three-year-old best seller that has already been endlessly milked for profits yield one more windfall for the industry?

With the film opening in May, the publishing industry is placing one of its biggest bets ever on the staying power of a blockbuster book. Publishers are using the movie's release to anchor numerous "Da Vinci"-related titles and tie-ins, including the novel's first U.S. paperback run. And all of them are trying to harness the selling power of the most successful novel in recent memory, with an estimated 40 million copies in print world-wide.

The pile-on is a common model in the book world, but "Da Vinci" is having an unusually long run of tie-ins. "The publishing industry sees something that's working and keeps doing it until it keels over," says Robert Miller, president of Walt Disney's Hyperion book-publishing unit. "When angels were hot, the first 40 books about them succeeded. Then not. The first 20 O.J. Simpson books worked. Then not. The pie is so fixed and the crumbs so thin that when a new area opens, be it the men's movement or computer books, we jump on it."

These new titles range from updated guides to the Dan Brown thriller to new novels with similar "Da Vinci"-like themes. Earlier this month, Pearson's Dutton imprint published 45,000 copies of Raymond Khoury's debut novel "The Last Templar," a thriller with religious overtones. There are now more than 146,000 in print. Next month, Bertelsmann's Ballantine Books will release Steve Berry's "The Templar Legacy"; it is already racking up sizable preorders on Barnes & Noble's Web site. "This is a ripple effect from a cultural phenomenon, no more, no less," says Richard Sarnoff, executive vice president of Bertelsmann's Random House, whose Doubleday imprint originally published "The Da Vinci Code."

But is there still an audience for new Da Vinci books? After all, dozens of titles related to the novel, from Delacorte Press's "Da Vinci Decoded" (September 2004) to Berkley's "The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code" (January 2005) already flooded the market after the book's initial release.

Oprah: James Frey is here and I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers. I think it's such a gift to have millions of people to read your work and that bothers me greatly. So now, as I sit here today I don't know what is true and I don't know what isn't. So first of all, I wanted to start with The Smoking Gun report titled, "The Man Who Conned Oprah" and I want to know—were they right?

James: I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate. Absolutely.

Oprah: Okay.

James: I think they did a good job detailing some of the discrepancies between some of the actual facts of the events…

Oprah: What [The Smoking Gun] said was that you lied about the length of time that you spent in jail. How long were you in jail?

James: [The Smoking Gun was] right about that. I was in [jail] for a few hours.

Oprah: Not 87 days?

James: Correct.

Oprah: We asked if you, your company, stood behind James's book as a work of non-fiction at the time. And they said, absolutely. And they were also asked if their legal department had checked out the book. And they said yes. So in a press release sent out for the book in 2004, by your company, the book was described as "brutally honest and an altering look at addiction." So how can you say that if you haven't checked it to be sure?

Nan: You know, Oprah, I mean, I think this whole experience is very sad. It's very sad for you. It's very sad for us.

Oprah: It's not sad for me. It's embarrassing and disappointing for me.

The two men, one a state judge in Louisiana who in June was convicted of mail fraud, were offered to The New York Times as witnesses by Mr. Frey's publishers, Doubleday and Anchor Books, imprints of Random House, to back up the accuracy of his descriptions in the book. Their names and telephone numbers were given in response to comments from former employees of Hazelden, the Minnesota rehabilitation center reportedly attended by Mr. Frey, who have said his portrayal of the treatment experience there was false and misleading. Mr. Frey has admitted to embellishing his past, but has maintained that his experiences in drug rehabilitation were real.

Alan J. Green, a Louisiana state judge, said he appeared in Mr. Frey's book as Miles, a federal appeals court judge. In a telephone interview Monday, he said he was a roommate of Mr. Frey's at Hazelden's main campus in Center City, Minn.; Mr. Frey himself has not named the treatment center he attended.

"Over all, I think he gave a pretty accurate description," Judge Green said of the book. But, he added, "there may have been some differences in how I would have described things." Asked about particular incidents in the book, like scenes of fighting between patients or violent treatment of one patient by another, Judge Green said, "There may have been some pushing and shoving, but as far as knock-down-drag-outs, I don't recall ever witnessing anything like that."

Asked about Mr. Frey's medical condition - the author describes arriving with a hole in his cheek and having his nose rebroken and reset at Hazelden - Judge Green said, "If a person needed medical treatment, they would be taken out to a local medical facility." In June, Judge Green was convicted of mail fraud in Federal District Court in New Orleans on charges involving two $5,000 cash payments that he accepted from a local bail bonds company. The conviction resulted from an investigation of racketeering charges in the Jefferson Parish courthouse. Judge Green, who has been suspended from the bench, is scheduled to be sentenced next month and could face up to 20 years in prison.

In the lawsuit, Trump alleges that O'Brien and Warner knowingly made egregiously false and malicious statements about Trump, his family, his personal life and his business dealings, including statements grossly misrepresenting Trump's net worth. Those defamatory statements included statements that O'Brien claimed were based on three purported anonymous sources with "direct knowledge" of Trump's finances, that Trump "was not remotely close to being a billionaire," and that his "net worth was somewhere between $150 million and $250 million."

The lawsuit alleges that in publishing these false statements, O'Brien and Warner deliberately chose to ignore, among other things, voluminous and comprehensive financial information that Trump made available to them prior to the publication of the book, which confirmed conclusively that Trump's net worth is in the billions of dollars. Indeed, Forbes Magazine rigorously analyzed the very same books and records and other financial data that O'Brien and Warner chose to ignore, and concluded that Trump's net worth conservatively is at least $2.7 billion.

The lawsuit further alleges that the defamatory statements were made not only in O'Brien's book, but also in a major article published in the New York Times on the front page of its Sunday Business Section, containing excerpts from the book, as well as in interviews of O'Brien about the book and the article. The lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Camden, New Jersey, seeks $2.5 billion in compensatory damages and $2.5 billion in punitive damages against O'Brien and Warner Books.

Commenting on the lawsuit, Trump said: "Rather than sitting back and letting false statements be published without challenge, I believe it is important to expose irresponsible, malicious and false reporting. The writer and publisher of this book knew full well that their statements were false and malicious, but in hopes of generating book sales, they did not care. In so doing, they exposed themselves to this lawsuit. It is about time that somebody stepped forward to expose certain members of the press for what they are. Whether it is a Jayson Blair or a Tim O'Brien, the public should be informed so that they can take a more skeptical view of the things they read in certain media. The libel laws of this country exist to protect against the dissemination of malicious falsehoods." Trump also added that the book was "terribly written."

Lynne Rae Perkins has won the 2005 John Newbery Medal for her novel Criss Cross (Greenwillow), and Chris Raschka won the 2005 Randolph Caldecott Medal for The Hello, Goodbye Window, written by Norton Juster (Hyperion/di Capua). Raschka had previously won a Caldecott Honor, for his picture book Yo? Yes! The awards were announced this morning at the ALA’s midwinter conference in San Antonio.

Four Caldecott Honor Books were named: Rosa, illustrated by Bryan Collier, written by Nikki Giovanni (Holt); Zen Shorts, written and illustrated by Jon J Muth (Scholastic Press); Hot Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride, written and illustrated by Marjorie Priceman (Atheneum/Schwartz); and Song of the Water Boatmen & Other Pond Poems, illustrated by Beckie Prange, written by Joyce Sidman (Houghton).

There were also four Newbery Honor Books: Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Scholastic); Whittington by Alan Armstrong, illustrated by S.D. Schindler (Random/Lamb); Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury); and Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Hudson Talbott (Putnam).

In a surprise upset, The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall (Knopf), which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature last November, was shut out of the awards.

China's two most famous actresses, Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li, play the leading roles in the film, which was initially approved by the censors. But the state-run Film Bureau has changed its mind. Mao Yu, director of the bureau's propaganda and publishing section, believes Memoirs poses "complex" problems and is "too sensitive". There were complaints in Japan about Chinese actresses portraying Japanese women, but there is outrage in China, where many regard geishas as prostitutes. The 26-year-old Zhang, who shot to fame in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and has since become Asia's most famous actress, has attracted venomous criticism from her compatriots.

One blogger said: "She's sold her soul and betrayed her country. Hacking her to death would not be good enough." Other bloggers claimed that casting of Zhang as the geisha Sayuri is the equivalent of a Jewish actress playing a Nazi.

With Sino-Japanese relations at their lowest point in decades, the authorities are worried the film will revive lingering resentment over the Japanese treatment of Chinese women before and during the Second World War. Tens of thousands of women were raped by Japanese troops during the infamous Nanjing Massacre in 1937. Thousands more were among the estimated 200,000 Asians forced to work as "comfort women" in Japanese military brothels during the war.

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But the casting of Zhang and Gong reflects the unprecedented popularity of Chinese stars, movies and film-makers. The Taiwanese director Ang Lee, for example, has just won a Golden Globe for his gay Western, Brokeback Mountain. With 260 films produced in 2005 by mainland and overseas Chinese, the industry is now the third-largest in the world after Hollywood and India's Bollywood, and is finding a worldwide audience.

More trouble is brewing for Michiana native James Frey who is said to have embellished parts of his best-selling memoir. A Million Little Pieces was the top-selling non-fiction book of 2005 and is based on the life of the graduate of St. Joseph High School in Michigan.

Thursday, a Chicago woman filed a lawsuit against Frey and his publisher, accusing them of consumer fraud. She says she read the book after hearing about it on The Oprah Winfrey Show and was emotionally moved. But now, she says she feels cheated, since learning parts of the book aren't true. James Frey has 20 days to respond to the lawsuit.

"When the manuscript of A Million Little Pieces was received by us at Doubleday, it was received as nonfiction, as a memoir," said Ms. Talese by phone. "Throughout the whole process of publication, it had always been a memoir, and for the first year and a half it was on sale, it was always a memoir with no disputation. It was never once discussed as fiction by me or anyone in my office."

Ms. Talese’s statement appears to contradict Mr. Frey, who has said that it was his publisher’s decision to foist A Million Little Pieces onto the public as a memoir rather than a novel, as he had originally written it. Just a few days ago, during an unrepentant appearance on Larry King Live, Mr. Frey said: "We initially shopped the book as a novel, and it was turned down by a lot of publishers as a novel or as a nonfiction book. When Nan Talese purchased the book, I’m not sure if they knew what they were going to publish it as. We talked about what to publish it as. And they thought the best thing to do was publish it as a memoir."

Ms. Talese said that she "almost collapsed" when she heard Mr. Frey make that statement. (Mr. Frey, as well as his editor, Sean McDonald, who is now at Riverhead, and his agent, Kassie Evashevski, didn’t respond to calls from The Observer.) Critics and journalists have since repeated Mr. Frey’s claim, citing it as evidence that the publishing industry and its craven marketing decisions are to blame for the fact that elements of Mr. Frey’s book are, in fact, not true.

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If Mr. Frey came to Ms. Talese today with the same manuscript, she said she’d publish it the same way, most likely with a disclaimer in the front. (In any case, she said that the book would never have worked as a novel, in part because the author himself is the only real character in it.) She added that [I]f Mr. Frey had confessed prior to publication to the fabrications revealed by the Smoking Gun last week, she would have excised them from the book. A transgression had been committed, Ms. Talese acknowledged, but the person responsible was Mr. Frey. "I don’t think it is ever a good idea to purposely distort the truth," she said.

"Like Dr. King I have a dream of my own, too, that the powerful message of this little book would be engraved on every human heart and will never be forgotten again," Winfrey said. "That you who read this book will feel as I do that these 120 pages ... should be required reading for all humanity."

"Night" is Wiesel's account of his family's placement in the Auschwitz death camp and is the first of more than 40 books, essays and plays he has written. The book is marketed on some online bookstores as a novel, but Wiesel's foundation labels it a memoir.

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Winfrey also said Monday she plans to travel with Wiesel to Auschwitz next month, and her show will have a high school essay contest on Wiesel's book. Fifty winners will be flown to Chicago, where her show is based, for a taping with the author, Winfrey said. In a 2002 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Wiesel recalled that "Night," written in the 1950s and originally in French, attracted little notice at first. "The English translation came out in 1960, and the first printing was 3,000 copies," he said. "And it took three years to sell them. Now, I get 100 letters a month from children about the book. And there are many, many million copies in print." In one passage, he sums up his feelings upon arrival in Auschwitz:

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. ... Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

'My anachronistic book was written while I was in a successful marriage that I expected would go on forever. Sadly, it now has little relevance for modern women, except perhaps as a cautionary tale,' Hekker wrote last week as she announced her U-turn.

In a display of spectacular bad taste, Hekker's husband presented her with divorce papers on their 40th wedding anniversary and left her for a younger woman. The divorce left her facing an uncertain financial future, bereft of income and - after spending her adult life bringing up five children - lacking skills to make her attractive in the job market. Despite that, the judge in her divorce case suggested that - at 67 - she go for job training. She ended up selling her engagement ring to pay for roof repairs and discovering she was eligible for food stamps. Her ex-husband, meanwhile, was holidaying with his new lover in Mexico. Hekker, once a role model for young homemakers, is now rapidly becoming an icon for so-called 'silver divorcees', older women who suddenly find themselves alone without skills and with a much reduced income.

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Hekker's advice to young American women now could not be more different from that of 25 years ago when she travelled the country extolling the virtues of making good meals, keeping a clean house and bringing up fine children. She still believes that those things are worthwhile, but she is under no illusions about marriage being forever. Today, she says, women have to look out for themselves as well - to prepare 'for being abandoned, so that if you end up alone you will have the skills to look after yourself'.

For Hekker, though, the story does have a happy ending. For months she had been offering a new book to New York publishers without success. Now, following publicity for her Times writing, she has literary agents knocking at her door and she is being signed for TV appearances.She is once again - a quarter of a century after her last appearance - booked for the Today television show.

Unfortunately, because A Million Little Pieces -- one of the best-selling books about drug addiction ever written -- has been trumpeted as an unflinching, real-life look into the world of a drug addict, it has helped to shape people's notions about drug abuse. Ironically, the very abundance of its clichés has likely helped make it a runaway best seller: People, after all, like having their suspicions confirmed. For nonaddicts, Pieces reinforces the still dangerously prevalent notion that it's easy to spot a drug addict or an alcoholic -- they're the ones bleeding from holes in their cheeks or getting beaten down by the police or doing hard time with killers and rapists. For those struggling with their own substance-abuse issues, Pieces sends the message that unless you've reached the depths Frey describes, you don't have anything to worry about—you're a Fraud. And if you do have a problem, you don't need to necessarily get treatment or look to others for support; all you need to do is "hold on." In building up a false bogeyman -- the American recovery movement's supposed reliance on the notion of "victimhood" -- Frey has set himself up as the one, truth-telling savior. In fact, it seems clear that Frey would have been well-served by taking the kind of unflinchingly honest look at his own life that most recovery programs demand.

In a rare interview, the reclusive Scottish author, 40, tells the Tatler magazine (excerpts are appearing in London's Daily Telegraph newspaper) that she was writing the first Harry Potter novel in 1991 when her mother died after a 10-year fight against multiple sclerosis.

The loss, says Rowling, greatly contributed to her decision to kill off the parents of her fictional boy wizard. Her greatest regret, Rowling also admits, is that her mother did not live to see the enormous success her daughter has enjoyed. Harry Potter's adventures became a worldwide publishing phenomenon, with six novels produced, 300 million books sold in 63 countries and four films produced.

"Barely a day goes by when I do not think of her. There would be so much to tell her, impossibly much," says Rowling, adding that her mother wasn't even aware that Harry was coming to life.

"My books are largely about death," says Rowling. "They open with the death of Harry's parents. There is Voldemort's obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal for anyone with magic. ... I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We're all frightened of it."

"I've never said this before, but, when I was repeatedly asked 'How are you coping?' I would say, 'Fine.' I was lying to myself at the time. Denial was my friend," she says. "I was hypersensitive because I had a daughter from my first marriage. It was as though I'd lived under a rock for a long time and suddenly someone had lifted it off and was shining a torch on me." She concludes, "It's not that life under the rock was awful, but actually I was petrified and didn't know how to handle it."

On Wednesday....he appeared on Larry King with a more nuanced position: "a memoir is a subjective retelling of events," he said. "it's an individual's perception of what happened in their own life; this is my recollection of my life." Oprah, in her inimitable semi-divine fashion, called into the show to lend her carefully-phrased support: " the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me, and I know it resonates with millions of people who read this book."

There's a distinction being made here that's worth scrutinizing. The "subjective retelling" defense invokes the double-layer of distortion that's inevitable in any memoir: events are filtered through the author's memory, and then they're fuzzed even further by the inherently impressionistic nature of any literary medium. Short of the unexpected appearance of a Recording Angel, there isn't much a memoirist can do to pull aside that two-ply veil. But before we get lost in an epistemological fog, let's not forget that those distortions must be kept separate from the wilfull deceptions of an author who's giving in to ulterior motives. Some falsehood comes with the territory of the memoirist; others must be deliberately imported into it.

Frey's second line of defense is a little more formidable. As he put it on Larry King, "the emotional truth is there." In other words, whatever the nitty-gritty bookkeepers turn up, his story has an empathic force, a psychological power, that makes the actual factual status of his writing kind of moot, and renders trivial the question of where it should be shelved in the bookstore.

But that defense simply begs the question, if it's not factual, why didn't Frey publish A Million Little Pieces as fiction? By claiming this his story was literally true, Frey endowed it with a heightened immediacy and an emotional force that it lacked as a novel — in effect, he borrowed a litttle extra emotional oomph from his trusting readers, who treated his narrative as 100% lived experience, real dues paid by a real person. That's not trivial. If Frey wasn't entitled to that immediacy and that force — if he stole that oomph rather than borrowed it — well, that's cheating. And he should come clean and give it back.

Readers calling Random House's customer service line to complain on Wednesday were told that if the book was bought directly from the publisher it could be returned for a full refund. Those who bought the book at a bookstore were told to try to return it to the store where it was bought.

"If the book was bought directly from us we will refund the purchase price in full," one Random House customer service agent told Reuters, noting readers would have to return the book with the original invoice. "If you bought it at a book store, we ask that you return the book to the book store." Asked why the publisher, which normally sells books directly to consumers as nonrefundable, would offer refunds, the agent said, "because of the controversy surrounding it."

Several customer service agents called by Reuters reporters also agreed to pay refunds. A Random House spokeswoman said the company would issue a formal statement about returns later.

Frey's memoir of alcohol and drug-induced mayhem sold 1.77 million copies last year after being chosen by Oprah Winfrey's book club in September. But investigative Web site The Smoking Gun on Sunday reported the book, published by Random House's Doubleday division, was full of exaggeration and inaccuracies.

Frey, whose graphic tale topped bestseller lists after being touted by Oprah Winfrey on her talk show, has threatened to sue the online publication over the allegations. In an article titled "The Man Who Conned Oprah," the Smoking Gun claims that Frey, 36, inflated claims about his criminal past, fudged court records and misrepresented his participation in a fatal car accident.

In comments to the site Frey "did, for the first time, admit that he had embellished central details of his criminal career and purported incarceration for 'obvious dramatic reasons' in the nonfiction work," the site says. As Marianne Sanders, the mother of one of the victims in the auto accident, tells the Smoking Gun: "Everything that I believe he wrote, even about my daughter ... was not an actual, the way the accident happened or anything. I never heard his name in connection with it."

In his book, Frey claims he was questioned by police after the accident and recalls being blamed for the tragedy by Sanders' parents. In a joint statement Monday, the book's hardcover publisher, Doubleday, and paperback publisher, Anchor, said: "We stand in support of our author, James Frey, and his book which has touched the lives of millions of readers."

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On his own site, Frey called the Smoking Gun's article "the latest attempt to discredit me." "So let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won't dignify this bull--- with any sort of further response," Frey wrote.

Mr. Leroy's tale was harrowing in its details and uplifting in its arc. He was supposed to have been a young truck-stop prostitute who had escaped rural West Virginia for the dismal life of a homeless San Francisco drug addict. Rescued as a young teenager by a couple named Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop and treated by a psychologist, he was able to turn his terrible youth into a thriving career as a writer. JT Leroy has published three critically acclaimed works of fiction noted for their stark portrayal of child prostitution and drug use.

Along the way Mr. Leroy gained the friendship and trust of celebrities and noted writers, who supported his career financially and offered him emotional support when he declared that he was infected with H.I.V. Sales were good, and his books were published around the world. Shy and reclusive, Mr. Leroy, now 25, appeared in public often disguised beneath a wig and sunglasses.

But the young man in the wig and sunglasses, it turns out, is not a man at all. The public role of JT Leroy is played by Savannah Knoop, Geoffrey Knoop's half-sister, who is in her mid-20's.

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It is unclear what effect the unmasking of Ms. Knoop will have on JT Leroy's readers, who are now faced with the question of whether they have been responding to the books published under that name, or to the story behind them. The identification of Ms. Knoop may also have repercussions for the publishing world; JT Leroy is under contract with Viking for a new novel, and Mr. Silverberg, his agent, said his books were on sale in as many as 20 different countries. Carolyn Coleburn, the director of publicity at Viking, said simply, "We stand by our authors."

Ever since Sony announced the May 19 movie release of The Da Vinci Code last fall, and released the film's trailer in mid-December, the question in the book industry has been when the tie-in paperback would arrive. Newsweek's Jan. 2 cover story, touting Da Vinci as the year's "hottest movie," only upped the ante. Now, retailers say, Anchor Books has set a March 28 release date for the long-awaited mass-market edition.

Though Anchor is guarding the printing and other specifics as closely as clues to the Holy Grail, the figure is likely to outstrip those for each of the last three Harry Potter paperbacks, which had first printings of up to 2.5 million.

With hardcover sales of 12 million in North America in less than three years, Da Vinci will be back at #1 on PW’s hardcover fiction list next Monday after slipping as low as #13 on November 7 (and off the New York Times printed list on November 13). For Allison Elsby, category manager for genre fiction at Borders & Walden, that's the strongest sign that plenty of people still haven't read the book and that demand for the paperback will be strong.

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Unlike Anchor, Dan Brown's other publishers are a little more forthcoming about the details of their makeover plans for his backlist. Pocket will publish new premium mass market editions of both Angels and Demons and Deception Point, each with first printings of 1 million, that will retail for $9.99. St. Martin's will resolicit orders for Digital Fortress.

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rowling, J.K. (Arthur A. Levine Books, 0439784549, 7/1/2005, $29.99)

2. A Million Little Pieces, Frey, James, (Anchor Books, 0307276902, 9/1/2005, $14.95)

3. The Kite Runner, Hosseini, Khaled, (Riverhead, 1594480001, 4/1/2004, $14.00)

4. 1776, McCullough, David, (Simon & Schuster, 0743226712, 5/1/2005, $32.00)

5. The Da Vinci Code, Brown, Dan, (Doubleday, 0385504209, 3/1/2003, $24.95)

6. The World Is Flat, Friedman, Thomas L. (Farrar Straus Giroux, 0374292884, 4/1/2005, $27.50)

7. The Purpose-Driven Life, Warren, Rick, (Zondervan, 0310205719, 10/1/2002, $19.99)

8. Angels & Demons, Brown, Dan, (Pocket Star, 0671027360, 7/1/2001, $7.99)

9. You: The Owner's Manual, Oz, Mehmet, (HarperCollins, 0060765313, 5/1/2005, $24.95)

10. Eldest, Paolini, Christopher, (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 037582670X, 8/1/2005, $21.00)

The 2,600-volume library includes a first edition of Alice in Wonderland with pages worn by Wharton’s fingers as a child, and works with personal inscriptions from James and Theodore Roosevelt.

"Nothing informs us more of the extraordinary genius of this woman than these books," said Stephanie Copeland, director of the Mount, Wharton’s estate and 48-acre gardens in Lenox. "What they will bring to Wharton scholarship is beyond value." A benefactor who wants to remain anonymous financed the purchase Monday from George Ramsden, a British bookseller who has cared for the collection since 1984, Copeland said.

The Mount hopes to use the acquisition as a fundraising tool by encouraging admirers to "adopt a book" for fees ranging from $1,000 to $1 million. Proceeds will help restore Wharton’s home and gardens. The most expensive book up for adoption will be Wharton’s copy of The Decoration of Houses, her first published work. Others include James’ The Golden Bowl, with an inscription by the author that reads, "To Edith Wharton — in sympathy."

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The books will be displayed in Wharton’s original library, where the shelves are currently empty. The collection will be on public display when the Mount opens for the season in May. Wharton, whose best-known work is Ethan Frome, died in France in 1937.

Given its huge size, a special stand will have to be designed and built to display the 114-page tome, which weighs 60kg. Its arrival in the Capital will see it join another previously record-breaking book in the NLS collection. Measuring just 1mm by 1mm, the Renfrewshire-published copy of the nursery rhyme Old King Cole was until very recently the tiniest book in the world. But its place in the record books has been snatched by an even smaller book, which measures only 0.1mm less in size.

The Bhutan book, published by Friendly Planet, is made up of breathtaking photographs taken during trips through the Himalayan country. In a series of four expeditions, the group took more than 40,000 photographs, with stunning images and life-size portraits depicting life in the remote Eastern paradise of mountainous panoramas and ancient architecture. It was created by the American academic and concert pianist, Michael Hawley, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with photographers Carolyn Bess, Sandy Choi, Dorji Drukpa, Becky Hurwitz, Choki Lhamo Kaka, Gyelsey Loday, Christopher Newell, David Salesin, and Ming Zhang.

Library chiefs have paid around £8500 for one of only a handful of copies of the book with much of the money going to charitable projects in Bhutan. The book will go on permanent display at the library and will be free for visitors to view. Cate Newton, NLS director of collection development, said it would be a memorable experience for visitors. She said: "We are very excited about the arrival of this extraordinary book, which will join the NLS collections that represent the history of publishing. The book is not only big but beautiful, with stunning photographs of the kingdom of Bhutan. It's perhaps appropriate that one of the subjects of the world's biggest book should be mountains.

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The sheer size of the new acquisition will be brought into sharp relief by comparing it with the smallest book in the library's collection, she added. "The National Library of Scotland also collects miniature books and owns one of the world's tiniest books, a copy of Old King Cole, which measures just 1mm by 1mm and was published right here in Scotland, in Paisley, in 1985."