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Thomas Perry, author of Silence
Your rules for this list indicate that you don't like rules. So I'll live up to them. Here are three picks in no particular order.
- Joseph Mitchell - McSorley's Wonderful Saloon (with an introduction by Calvin Trillin). These are essays Mitchell wrote between his arrival in New York the day after the stock market crash in 1929 and his death in 1996. He was a fine prose stylist with a supernaturally good eye and ear.
- Azar Nafisi - Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. A brilliant professor of literature recounts her long struggle to run a seminar on Western works in her home after it became impossible to carry on at the university in post-revolution Iran. Her humanity and intelligence are demonstrated both in her contemplation of events, and in her discussions of the great works and why they're useful to real people in an emergency.
- Ray Banks - Saturday's Child (pub. date 2008). This is one of several new crime novels from the UK that Harcourt has been publishing lately, and it's terrific. Another is Hard Man by Allan Guthrie. The sensibilities of these writers are grim and funny, and the world they portray is just alien enough to us to make it worth exploring.
Richard Pine, literary agent and founding partner at InkWell Management
- Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen's Union. A brilliant and completely original novel that's also a thoroughly entertaining read.
- Theresa Schwegel - Person of Interest. With this book I experienced the great joy of discovering the work of a novelist who is both new to me and wildly talented.
- Denise Mina - The Dead Hour. The second installment in the wonderful Paddy Meehan series; it's as good as any UK crime fiction I've read in years.
Paul Guyot, screenwriter and short story writer
- James Lee Burke - The Tin Roof Blowdown. It'll be a joke (again) if this doesn't win the Edgar.
- Stewart O'Nan - Last Night at the Lobster. A tiny little story where nothing happens, and it's brilliant.
- Michael Craig - The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King - Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time. Entertaining and suspenseful enough to be a novel, but every word is true.
Elaine Flinn, author of Deadly Vintage
- Judith Freeman - The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved. This was so engrossing, I spent most of my reading time (?!) catching up on Chandler, which led me back to Hemingway, le Carré and Cain -- which left little time for much else.
Ace Atkins, author of White Shadow
- Daniel Woodrell - Winter's Bone. An absolute little masterpiece.
- Elmore Leonard - Up in Honey's Room. Proving time and again why he's still the best.
- Dashiell Hammett - The Big Knockover. More than 80 years later, few can reach his level. He makes it look so damn easy.
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