O CAPTAIN: The prolific science fiction writer Lois McMaster Bujold has won four best-novel Hugo Awards in her career so far. That's more than anyone except the great Robert A. Heinlein, who won five - though one of his should by rights take an asterisk, since it was awarded 50 years retroactively. Now Bujold can claim another of Heinlein's achievements: With "Captain Vorpatril's Alliance" hitting the hardcover fiction list this week at No. 16 (it's the latest entry in her comic Vorkosigan Saga series, set some thousand years in the future), she's finally broken into the print edition of the New York Times best-­seller list. Bujold wasn't always sure this day would come. Discussing her awards in 2005, she told the book blogger Adrienne Martini: "They can give a writer a welcome sense of validation, if only on the "Somebody liked it! Somebody really liked it!" level. . . . Becoming a big-list (i.e., New York Times and that ilk) best seller would do as well, but that seems to be much harder to achieve. Although Bujold writes about a distant intergalactic future, she has mixed feelings about the distractions of modern technology. "Wikipedia is so dangerous," she told The Minneapolis Star Tribune a few years ago. You go online to look up the definition of eclampsia, and three hours later you find yourself reading this earnest explanation of tentacle porn in [Japanese] anime. BOOKSELLER I: "The Racketeer," John Grisham's new legal thriller, maintains its hold atop the hardcover fiction list for a third consecutive week, fending off challenges from Clive and Dirk Cussler ("Poseidon's Arrow," new at No. 2) and Barbara Kingsolver ("Flight Behavior," new at No. But "The Racketeer" isn't the only new Grisham on the shelf these days; he also has an essay in "My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read and Shop," a winsome little anthology just out from Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. So what's Grisham's favorite place to browse, read and shop? It's a bookstore in Blytheville, Ark. - called, simply, That Bookstore in Blytheville - where the owner, Mary Gay Shipley, was a fan even in Grisham's hard-luck early years. He remembers giving a St. Patrick's Day reading there, complete with green beer and popcorn, on the day in 1991 that he first hit the best-seller list with "The Firm." Since then, of course, things have come easier for Grisham. But he's nervous about the future of "his" bookstore. "Blytheville is an old, declining cotton town," he writes, "and many of its Main Street stores are empty. Mary Gay has kept hers open through hard work and the sheer will of her personality. With independent bookstores vanishing at an alarming rate, I wonder how long she will hang on, or if someone will take her place. He needn't wonder much longer: when I called the store to chat with Shipley recently, she confirmed that a sale was in the works to a young Arkansas resident who wanted to learn the business from her. "We should have a contract and an announcement soon," she said, "and by early next year he should be the one in charge." BOOKSELLER II: Larry McMurtry - whose new book, "Custer," enters the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 13 - has also taken recent steps to get out of the book business, auctioning two-thirds of the inventory from his huge store in Archer City, Tex. Interviewed in the latest issue of Texas Monthly, McMurtry sounded glum about the prospects of the book culture. "I just think it's fading," he said. I was happy with the book sale because a lot of the young dealers showed up. And yet there were only a handful of them, really.