31 Noted Authors Pick Their Favorite Books

“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn wasn’t a new book when my mother was young. It’s still luminous, the story of Francie Nolan struggling up in a tenement slum through the cracks in the pavement to reach the sun. It may be the best book I’ve ever read about poverty, parenthood, the immigrant experience, and just about everything else. My firstborn daughter is named Francie Nolan.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard is the author of The Deep End of the Ocean and more than 20 other books, including the YA novel What We Saw at Night ($18, amazon.com).

“I read it when I was an outcast 10-year-old and the main character, little Francie Nolan, became my best friend. I’m still grateful.”

—Jeannette Walls, author of Half Broke Horses and The Glass Castle, just published her first novel, The Silver Star ($26, amazon.com).

To buy: $18, amazon.com.

Looking for a great summer read? See which beach books these authors chose.

“My all-time personal favorite. I love this book, all of it: the plot, the characters, the dialogue, much of which was lifted verbatim by John Huston for his screenplay for the beloved movie of the same name. The single best monologue in fiction appears toward the end, when Sam Spade tells Brigid O’Shaughnessy why he’s giving her to the police.”

—Erik Larson’s nonfiction best-seller In the Garden of Beasts is now in paperback ($16, amazon.com).

To buy: $14, amazon.com.

“Oh—so hard to choose! But I’ll go with Gilead. An uplifting tale of love in its many forms, told in a style in which every word is perfect. A joyous read.”

—M.L. Stedman’s best-selling debut, The Light Between Oceans, recently came out in paperback ($16, amazon.com).

To buy: $15, amazon.com.

“A book about life in a Bombay slum that combines investigative brilliance with literary grace.”

—Thrity Umrigar is the author of six books, including The Space Between Us and her latest, The World We Found ($15, amazon.com).

To buy: $27, amazon.com.

“If you think 700 pages on the many ways in which exceptional kids (trans, Downs, autistic, Deaf, criminal, genius) can stretch their families’ conception of love doesn’t sound like summertime reading, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity will teach you otherwise.”

—Emma Donoghue followed up her best-selling novel Room with the short-story collection Astray ($26, amazon.com).

To buy: $37.50, amazon.com.

“I love the voice of this book, so suffused with nostalgia and so smart about youth—and its inevitable loss.”

—Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel, The Age of Miracles, is now in paperback ($15, amazon.com).

To buy: $15, amazon.com.

“When I read the last page of this heartbreaking, funny, hopeful novel I went right back to the first page and read the whole book again! A beautiful movie star, a dreamy Italian man, a schlocky producer, an ambitious assistant, a rock star, a wannabe screenwriter, and Richard Burton all come together in the most winning way imaginable.”

—Ann Hood’s fifth book is The Obituary Writer ($27, amazon.com).

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“Meyer’s first book, American Rust, was a literary page-turner. His second, The Son, is an American epic. I read an advance copy and came away staggered by its power and depth. I haven’t read anything this good in a long, long time.”

—Kevin Powers is the author of The Yellow Birds, just published in paperback ($15, amazon).

To buy: $28, amazon.com.

“I cherish my tattered copy of Nora Ephron Collected. I think I have every essay memorized.”

—J. Courtney Sullivan’s novels include Maine and The Engagements, just published ($27, amazon.com).

To buy: from $14.50 (used), amazon.com.

“Mabel and Jack are a homesteading couple in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness whose bitter lives change the moment they encounter Faina, the primitive child they may or may not have conjured out of fresh snow and longing. An incredibly moving retelling of a Russian fairly tale. Absolutely haunting from page one.”

—Paula McLain’s second novel is The Paris Wife, recently released in paperback ($15, amazon.com).

To buy: $15, amazon.com.

“I love this book because it is a haunting, touching, and beautifully written story about a deeply flawed family. I also love it because it was put into my hands more than 20 years ago by a young woman who said to me: ‘You must read this book.’ Did I ask that young woman to marry me because of McFarland’s book? That might be overstating things. But sometimes when someone changes your life by handing you a great book, she might be there to change your life in other ways as well.”

—Garth Stein is the author of three novels, including The Art of Racing in the Rain ($15, amazon.com).

To buy: $14, amazon.com.

“An expressive, ingenious graphic novel that also happens to be an unforgettable memoir about first love.”

—Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter of Sweet) will publish his second novel, Songs of Willow Frost ($26, amazon.com), in September.

To buy: $30, amazon.com.

“Personal favorite: anything by Edna Ferber, but I’d pick Giant first. Just a great, epic tale of love and loss and success and failure, all against the oil boom in Texas in the first half of the 20th century.”

—Melanie Benjamin’s third novel, The Aviator’s Wife ($26, amazon.com), was published earlier this year.

To buy: $15, amazon.com.

“I bought this book (about the life—and mysterious after-life—of Eva Perón) while on vacation in Buenos Aires...and good-bye, Buenos Aires: I couldn’t stop reading the book.”

—J.I. Baker’s debut novel is The Empty Glass ($16, amazon.com), just published in paperback.

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“Natalie Kusz’s often-overlooked but astonishing memoir follows the story of her family, who jumped in a car in California in 1969 and moved to Alaska to homestead off the land near Fairbanks, where temperatures in the winter regular drop to 40 below. Kusz, who is 6 at the time, is attacked (and almost killed) by a sled dog, but the most compelling parts of the book are her poetic, unflinching reflections on everything from daughterhood to motherhood to what it means to build your own home—literally, out of scrap lumber and visqueen.”

—Leigh Newman is the author of Still Points North, published in March ($26, amazon.com).

To buy: $21, amazon.com.

“Endless Love is a personal favorite—a gripping read that is as much about obsession and madness as it is about first love.”

—Joanna Hershon’s latest novel, A Dual Inheritance, came out in May ($26, amazon.com).

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“I revisit this truly delightful manual about once a year. The story behind the (slightly odd) title is worth the price of the book alone. I can’t recommend this highly enough to anyone who wants to write or who is just trying to live life in a more sensible and fulfilling way.”

—Will Schwalbe’s memoir, The End of Your Life Book Club, is now in paperback ($15, amazon.com).

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“My list of favorite books changes daily, if not hourly, but there are a few that I turn to over and over again as a writer. Whenever I begin to doubt the entire project of writing, I pick up Mrs. Bridge and am reassured.”

—Annie Barrows’s books include The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ($15, amazon.com) and the Ivy and Bean series of children’s books.

To buy: $15, amazon.com.

“This is a page-turner that begins with a magical premise—a mind born new right at the moment of a body’s death. We begin with death and move backward through a life, as seen through the ‘eyes’ of this new mind, and we track the actions of the character’s body through everything it did before it died. This is curious enough, but the mind telling the story understands the world backward, as if on ‘rewind.’ Does this make any sense? It does in Amis’s hands and has a bizarrely profound impact.”

—Aimee Bender (The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake) will publish a new story collection, The Color Master ($26, amazon.com), in August.

To buy: $14, amazon.com.

“A novel set in Tudor England that continues to move me on each reading—a beautifully written and emotionally complex book about Anne Boleyn that is courageous enough to resist easy explanations of the English queen’s appeal and creates a woman who could change the course of history with intelligence, style, and nerve tinged with recklessness, and driven by a dark ambition that eventually devoured her.”

—Nancy Bilyeau’s second novel, The Chalice ($27, amazon.com), was published in March.

To buy: $15, amazon.com.

“One novel that I think will always be a personal favorite of mine is Room. The book is a force of nature: harrowing one moment, poignant the next. I can think of few books that so powerfully convey the lengths we will go to as parents to keep our children safe. And that voice? Brilliant. This is a book that gave me one whopper of an inferiority complex as a writer.”

—Chris Bohjalian is the author of numerous novels, including The Sandcastle Girls ($16, amazon.com), newly out in paperback, and his latest, The Light in the Ruins ($26, amazon.com).

To buy: $8, amazon.com.

“I adore Mark Haddon’s A Spot of Bother, a shrewd, funny family story with great characters that escalates from warmly familiar to hysterically ridiculous and is a joy all along the way.”

—Laurie Frankel just published the paperback edition of her second novel, Goodbye for Now ($15, amazon.com).

To buy: $15, amazon.com.

“I have read and adored many books, but Joseph Campbell, with his vast knowledge of world mythology, comes closer than any author I know to answering life’s most important questions: who we are and why we’re here.”

—Susan Cain is the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking ($16, amazon.com).

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“Every spring, the three younger Makioka sisters don their finest kimonos to stroll beneath the cherry blossoms at Kyoto, a ceremony that seems to encapsulate the ritualized elegance of their lives and their deep bonds of affection, both of which are threatened by the family’s declining fortunes and a Japan that is swiftly changing on the eve of World War II.”

—Pauline Chen’s second novel, The Red Chamber, was recently released in paperback ($16, amazon.com).

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“Gone starts out with a simple, riveting premise that reverberates more and more deeply all the way to the poignant, perfect ending, which will make readers smile through their tears.”

—Kate Christensen is the author of six novels and the new memoir Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites ($27, amazon.com).

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“To get the most out of this book, you have to go in boldly, knowing it’s going to be dark and weird and confusing; knowing that not everything will add up, or even register entirely, the first time through. But that’s why you read it again. And again. That’s the highest praise I can offer these days: This is a book worth rereading.”

—Robin Sloan’s second novel is Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore ($25, amazon.com).

To buy: $8, amazon.com.

“Haskell is one of the great living naturalists, approaching the forest and its creatures with wonder but never with expectations. This book is a meditation and I read it as such: one chapter each night before bed.”

—Jane Bordon is the author of the memoir I Totally Meant to Do That ($14, amazon.com).

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“Or just about any book by Graham Greene. As a journalist who has now written a book myself, I’m in awe of how Greene weaves his narrative into the social and political context of his Haitian setting. The Comedians drips with atmosphere as well as suspense.”

—Becky Aikman’s memoir, Saturday Night Widows ($26, amazon.com), was published in January.

To buy: $16, amazon.com.

“Yes, he’s my son and, yes, that reeks of nepotism, but please bear in mind that the novel was just nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery novel by an American author. What makes it special, in my opinion, is a hefty dose of something that’s been largely missing from crime fiction since Donald Westlake passed away: rib-splitting humor.”

—Jonathan Kellerman is the author of more than 30 novels, including Guilt ($28, amazon.com).

To buy: $10, amazon.com.

“Pure charm. This is the book I’ve given over and over to friends. Every single one of them cherishes it as much as I do.”

—Maria Semple’s second novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, is now in paperback ($15, amazon.com).

To buy: $14, amazon.com.