One of the joys of reading a wonderful book is recommending it to friends. Here are some favorites of mine to share with you:

Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger & Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

anything by Jane Austen

Beryl Bainbridge, The Birthday Boys

Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter; The Rule of the Bone

Tim Barbash, The Last Good Chance

Pat Barker, The Eye in the Door; The Ghost Road; Regeneration

Andrea Barrett, The Voyage of the Narwhal; Ship Fever and Other Stories

Chris Bohjalian, Midwives

Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

T.C. Boyle, Drop City

Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin'

anything by the Bronte sisters

Geraldine Brooks, March

A.S. Byatt, Possession

Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Tracey Chevalier, The Girl with the Pearl Earring

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Michael Cunningham, The Hours

anything by Dickens

Anthony Doerr, The Shell Collector

Roddy Doyle, The Commitments; Paddy Clarke, ha-ha-ha

Andre Dubus, The House of Sand and Fog

Debra Magpie Earling, Perma Red

Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine; The Beet Queen

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

John Fante, Ask the Dust

Janet Fitch, White Oleander

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

Richard Ford, Rock Springs; The Sportswriter

John Fowles, The Collector

Paula Fox, Desperate Characters

Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the D0gs Tonight

Ernest Gaines, A Lesson before Dying

John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

Joseph Gangemi, Inamorata

Julia Glass, Three Junes

Molly Gloss, Wild Life

Rumer Godden, A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep; Two under the Indian Sun

Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

Barbara Gowdy, The White Bone

Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter; The Quiet American

David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

Kathryn Harrison, Poison

Beth Helms, Dervishes

Chanrithy Him, When Broken Glass Floats

Peter Hoeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

Richard Hughes, High Wind in Jamaica

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Keri Hulme, The Bone People

Rachel Ingalls, Mrs. Caliban

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

Arthur Japin, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi

Charles Johnson, Middle Passage

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Mary Karr, The Liars Club; Cherry

John Knowles, A Separate Peace

Deborah Larsen, The White

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

Elizabeth McCracken, Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry

Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding

David Malouf, Remembering Babylon

Beryl Markham, West with the Night

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude

Valerie Martin, Mary Reilly; Property

W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge

Daniel Mason, The Piano Tuner

Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Deep End of the Ocean

David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

Henry Mulisch, The Assault

Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

anything by Edna O'Brien

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

Joseph O'Connor, The Star of the Sea

Ben Okri, The Famished Road

Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine

Whitney Otto, How to Make an American Quilt

Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats

George Orwell, 1984

Ann Packer, The Dive from Clausen's Pier

Alan Paton, Cry the Beloved Country

Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone

Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea

Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Marjane Satrapi, Perseopolis

Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

David Sedaris, Naked

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

Frances Sherwood, Vindication

Joan Silber, The Size of the World

Joseph Skibell, A Blessing on the Moon

Tara Bray Smith, West of Then

Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath; Of Mice and Men

William Styron, Sophie's Choice

anything by William Trevor

Patricia Volk, Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle

Liza Ward, Outside Valentine

Eveyln Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Marianne Wiggins, John Dollar

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse