A Top Ten List of My Classic Favorite Books

Everywhere I go online there are lists, so I thought I’d do a list this week. I haven’t done one since my “how not to kick the bucket” list. The challenge, of course, is a list of what? I’ve already done the bucket list. I know I haven’t seen ten movies this year. I don’t think I’ve seen five movies this year (if you discount Netflix and I think we should, don’t you?).

I’m a hermit, so that limits list options even further. Not sure anyone but me is interested in my favorite chocolate–unless you’re sitting next to me. Then it would matter.

You probably knew it was going to circle around to books, right? I used to have other hobbies, but I’ve had to let them fall by the wayside (time issue) and focus on words. This boils down to: I love to read and I love to write. So here’s my top ten list of authors that maybe you haven’t heard of but might like to check out. Because I made a list of them. Or just because:

Helen McInnes. I discovered her in one of those Reader’s Digest Condensed Books collections. My first was Double Image, but I’m glad I didn’t stop there. She published her first book in 1942 and her last in 1984. One of her books on my reread list is Agent in Place, though it isn’t the only one. Friends and Lovers, well, read it and see if it makes you ponder things as it did me. And it’s a fun story besides the “making me think” part.
Jane Aiken Hodge. You might be too young to understand the “age of the Gothics.” There were a lot of authors who I just lost because I didn’t own the books and maybe only read one title by them, but Hodge was not a lost author. She published her first novel in 1961 and her last in 2003. I don’t have all her novels on my keeper shelf, just the ones I couldn’t quite forget, like The Adventurers.
Alastair Maclean. If you love WWII movies, you’ve probably seen his Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare. If you’ve seen the other movies made from his books, well, don’t judge the books by those movies. The Golden Rendezvous is a favorite that was made into a travesty of a movie.
Manning Coles. It was kind of a shock to look him up and realize how many of his books I’ve missed. As I mentioned in my blog post on book chemistry, how do I know why I engage with an author? I just know I really enjoyed his Tommy Hambleton stories enough to hunt them down later.
Frances Parkinson Keyes. I discovered her while browsing my way through my hometown library, but found my interest revived when we moved to New Orleans and discovered she’d lived there. Came a Cavalier was read almost to pieces. I bought it for .95 and still like to browse through it for favorite parts.
Mary Elgin doesn’t have a wikipedia page, probably because she only wrote three books. Huge sigh. I stumbled onto Highland Masquerade first. Took the internet and used book sites before I could get my hands on The Wood and the Trees. The title is quite awful, but the story is wonderful.
The Gordons. Did you ever see the Disney movie That Darn Cat? Well, it came from a book written by this crime-writing couple called Undercover Cat. They wrote several books about FBI agents and stories. Fun story and a Halley Mills movie? Oh yeah, I’m there.
Sally Watson. She was a young adult discovery, but I never forgot Jade and hunted it down later as a re-release here. It’s a story about a young girl who becomes a pirate and falls in love. Of course, I couldn’t forget it. Action. Adventure. Romance. Sigh.
D. E. Stevenson. My favorite of her many novels is Miss Buncle’s Book and Miss Buncle Married. Because they are about an author, a quirky author. They used to be hard to find, but I found some shiny, new re-releases and audiobooks. Score!
Mary Stewart and Georgette Heyer both need to make the list. I learned so much from reading these two authors. And they took me on some fun adventures!