Conroy, Clavell lead morning line for best-sellerdom

There are few surprises in book publishing these days, for theentertainment packagers mastered the industry long ago. Publishersmight argue otherwise, but the best-seller list is fairly wellorchestrated months before its candidates reach bookstores.

After The Hunt for the Red October made him a household word,for instance, Tom Clancy could have translated the Manhattan phonebook into Urdu and made it a best-seller. His second novel, RedStorm Rising, a commendable commercial World War III yarn publishedAug. 4, now has 420,000 copies in print and owns the No. 1 spot onjust about everybody's best-seller list.

If anyone can unseat Clancy, Pat Conroy will. In …