The best novels that knock you off your ass-umptions

This is the only book I reread regularly (life is short, so many titles!) because it is gobsmackingly brilliant. The story is about a woman visiting an English country town who’s mistaken for a former resident and convinced to take that person’s place. It’s beautifully written, with great characters, typically compelling plot, but the twist! I gasped out loud the first time and have never failed to get chills on every reread. You don’t see the surprise coming, and yet it is absolutely logical and perfect. I keep trying to find someplace where Stewart trips up or gives it away, and there’s nothing. I bow down.

This book has everything, Mystical Irish lace, touches of magic, a lovely romance, chilling family dysfunction, and a fabulous extra character in the guise of Witchtown, USA—Salem, Massachusetts. Towner Whitney comes back to Salem for the funeral of a beloved relative and ends up having to cope with demons from her past in a gorgeous, evocative seaside setting. The ending was a complete surprise to me, one of those Whaaaat? moments that are so rare and so thrilling, and which I keep trying to get to in my own books!

This book surprised me on all counts. I’m not crazy about historical fiction because real lives are seldom as beautifully crafted as fictional ones and often make for dull novels. I knew nothing about Margaret Mead and cared less about archeology. Plus jungles... ew. I’d make a dismal explorer! But this book gripped me with fantastic settings and characters, and a sexy love triangle juiced it up. The story also challenged my so-far unexamined ideas about the Western study of societies and civilizations and left me thinking some good deep thoughts long after I finished. A brilliant book that tries to do a lot of things and manages all of them.

I do not like science fiction. I hate stories about aliens. The idea of sending people out into space to colonize planets makes me claustrophobic enough to panic. But I adored this book. I made two book groups read this one—they both whined massively . . . and then loved it, too. Far beyond the usual space adventure, this copes with important issues of society and faith, of relationships and commitments and loyalties, and how easy it can be to do “the right thing” without understanding or anticipating the consequences. A philosophical book dressed in adventure novel clothes. 

This is the first book in forever that I got completely lost in. One of the sad parts of becoming an author is that I always keep an analytical eye out for craft, for pacing, characterizations—in short, for what works and what doesn’t. I still adore reading, but it has become something of a professional exercise. This book, however, was one long, fantastic orgy of a story, which I devoured the way I used to devour novels as a girl, reading until my eyes swelled and my head ached and I smelled bad and looked worse, but still could not stop until I got to the end, and then I walked around in a dorky stupor for hours. You know, the really, really good stuff.