Haven't heard of her, tell us more.

The following are my favorite authors. When I hear they have a new book out, I immediately check the library to see how far on hold I will be. If the line is horrible, I go to the bookstore and scan through. More than likely I end up buying it.

>Sharon Kay Penman

>Terry Pratchett

>Ursula Hegi

>Isabelle Allende

>Margaret Atwood

The last three have disappointed me once or twice, but not enough to bump them off the list (previous favorites such as Anne Tyler and John Irwing as examples)

margad- I found a book by Laurie Colwin at a library sale. I picked it because the title appealed to me "Happy All The Time." Haven't read it yet, so I'd also be interested to know more about her.

margad,I like her too. Did you know that she has written a cookbook? I've had it for years and love the way she entertwines her wonderful way with words between and in the recipes.

Favorite Author? well,there are so many but one who comes to mind is one I'm reading right now. PD James.

Many years ago I read Happy All The Time and remember enjoying it very much. Her later books were something of a disappointment. I believe she died very young of ovarian cancer.

Some favorite authors for me are E.B. White, Laura Ingalls Wilder and D.H. Lawrence. How's that for an odd assortment?

Authors whose newly published books I order without reading synopses, first pages or reviews - Ian McEwan, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Anne Tyler, Minette Walters.
Used to get everything by Iain Banks, but gave up on him after three stinkers in a row. John Irving, ditto.
I have read almost everything by John Steinbeck, Angela Carter, J.D.Salinger.

Laurie Colwin (1944-1992) died of a heart attack. I remember hearing the news on the radio and was stunned. I love her Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. I also like Happy All the Time and A Big Storm Knocked It Over. I think that's all I've read of hers.

My old favorites (deceased writers) are Daphne du Maurier, Anya Seton, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Arthur W. Upfield, Bruce Chatwin, and a bunch more.

Newer writers I have a harder time naming -- in fact, I'm drawing a blank at current writers that I've read most everything they've written. I don't follow individual authors much anymore. I used to like Paul Theroux, but he got so crabby with age that I've pretty much given up on him.

My favorites, old and new, in no particular order:

William Styron
Annie Doak Dillard
Willa Cather
Paul Bowles
B. deBernieres
Jon Mortimer
Ian McEwan
Daphne duMaurier
Alain Fournier
Rumer Godden

>

friedag, may you better define "crabby" form, I'm not a mother tongue.
Because just a few days ago I came across a Paul Theroux book, "Dark Star Safari" and the back cover appealed to me.
But now you sowed doubts in my mind

grelobe

V.S. Naipaul - I read in big gulps in the 70s and 80s when I was in my 20s and 30s and he opened my world.

Flannery O'Connor - southern gothic that resonated immediately when I first read her in college and solidified as a favorite with her collection of correspondence The Habit of Being

Evelyn Waugh - I can't help it. I know critics want him off of every serious list, but Brideshead Revisited is one of the few books I delight in revisiting.

M.F.K. Fisher - If she weren't a food writer would be recognized as one of the best writers the English speaking world in the 20th century.

Hemingway - who I never read until middle age, but who captures me completely,

Twain - so completely a part of my life and culture I forget about him, but his The Mysterious Stranger was probably far too influential in my young life.

In no particular order, and many are subject to change:

1. George Gissing (The Nether World, New Grub Street, The Odd Women, The Whirlpool, The Unclassed)
2. Emile Zola (L'Assomoir)
3. Jane Austen (P&P and Persuasion)
4. John Sandford (Lucas Davenport mysteries)
5. Edward Rutherfurd (Sarum and Russka were the best.)
6. Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca and Jamaica Inn)
7. Kathy Reichs (Tempe Brennan mysteries)
8. George Orwell (lesser known works)
9. Kate Sedley (Roger the Chapman mysteries)

10. Edith Wharton (The Custom in the Country)
11. Janwillem van der Wetering (Grijpstra & de Grier mysteries)
12. Ellis Peters (Cadfael)
13. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes - gosh I miss Jeremy Brett. He WAS Holmes.)

I don't think they have any one thing in common but I do enjoy their ways with words.

PAM

grelobe, crabby means ill-tempered, irritable. Theroux has a cynical streak and can be very spiteful (for instance, Sir Vidia's Shadow, his memoir of his relationship with V.S. Naipaul). I certainly don't want to discourage you, grelobe, from reading Paul Theroux. He's worthwhile, if you can forgive him for being surly. I quite enjoyed Dark Star Safari -- in fact, I like all of Theroux's travel writing better than his novels and biographies.

In no particular order, and I'm sure I'm leaving some out:

Jane Austen
Hammond Innes
Arthur Upfield
Nevil Shute
Georgette Heyer
J.R.R.Tolkien
C.S. Forester (the Hornblower series)
James Herriot
Cleveland Amory
Gerald Durrell
Ngaio Marsh
Booth Tarkington (for Seventeen Call me stupid; it
never occurred to me until just now that I ought to see if
he wrote anything else--and he did!)

For body of work:

Edith Wharton
Margaret Atwood
Graham Greene
Ernest Hemingway
Michael Connelly
Lee Child
Robert Crais
John Sandford
Patricia Cornwell (although she's losing my allegiance)

Paul Bowles for The Sheltering Sky
Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things
Peter Hoeg for Smilla's Sense of Snow
Donna Tartt for The Secret History
Barbara Kingsolver for The Poisonwood Bible
Arthur Golden for Memoirs of a Geisha

I know I'm forgetting someone....

biwako, I adored William Baxter when I was about fourteen. I thought he was like my brother just older than me, and I was more than a little bit like Jane to his William. Heh!

Tarkington's Penrod and Penrod and Sam were also adolescent favorites of mine. But I was completely enamored with The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. Alice is William's counterpart, in many ways -- she made me both laugh and cringe when I was a teenager and in my early twenties. I reread most of Tarkington's books every few years; but I read Alice more often and, if anything, the older I get the more affection I have for her. I can't say that about too many other fictional characters. Perhaps only Cassandra Mortmain in I Capture the Castle and Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn beat out Alice...but the three are so different from each other that I don't want to choose!

Friedag -- thank you for correcting me on the cause of Laurie Colwin's death. Such a loss.

My favorites, in no particular order:

Jane Austen
Pat Conroy
John Irving
Wally Lamb (wish he was more productive!)
Colleen McCullough

Thomas Hardy!!! Anyone else?