Book Recommendations: Fiction

[skygazer]

With all this reading going on around here, I thought it might be a good time to collect people's recommendations for good books. I'm going to start another thread for nonfiction.

My recommendation is The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams. Adams wrote Watership Down which was a wonderful book. The Plague Dogs is a bit darker, a little more complex and touches on some uncomfortable issues. It's a great read, though, with some great characters.

Rowf and Snitter are dogs who are living in a research facility where they undergo medical experiments. When they escape, the press decides they must have some horrible virus or something (since they came from a research lab) and they travel throughout the English countryside, dodging people from the facility as well as citizens who are afraid of them.

They are beautifully drawn characters in and of themselves and I've been seriously thinking of reading it again lately which is why I thought of it.

[Writer]

1. Peace Like a River by Leif Engel.

[skygazer]

2. I gave that to my daughter for her birthday

Read it first, of course. I love birthdays. :P

[skygazer]

3. Somebody's gotta have something

Shameless kick :kick:

[skygazer]

4. One more shameless kick for fiction

:kick:

[JitterbugPerfume]

5. anything by Barbara Kingsolver and

Margaret Atwood

[terrya]

6. "On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan

The last fiction book I read. Excellent novel.

[Flaxbee]

7. I just finished This One and Magic Life by Anne George

and really enjoyed it. I also recently read Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and found it wonderful. Sight Hound by Pam Houston is interesting, and the Dorothy Sayers mysteries starting when Harriet Vane is introduced - Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, then Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon are all excellent - England in the midwar years is very well depicted, Sayers' characters are excellent. I hesitate to classify them as mysteries - they are just classics.

Also, Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.

[Flaxbee]

8. also, a DU'er here has a cousin (I think) who won a writing prize

for The Virgin of Small Plains:

Advance praise for The Virgin of Small Plains

“The Virgin of Small Plains will keep you up all night. Nancy Pickard’s intelligent, suspenseful storytelling never disappoints.”
–Julie Garwood

“Like the heart-stopping skid that sets it in motion, this book hurtles inexorably toward a startling conclusion. Along the way Nancy Pickard wrests magic from the everyday and redemption from broken dreams. The Virgin Of Small Plains is a beautiful and resonant book.”
–Carol Goodman, author of The Ghost Orchid

“An unforgettable tale of love, lust, faith, betrayal, and redemption. A powerful, mesmerizing suspense novel–a tour de force!”
–Judith Kelman, author of The Session

“A hold-your-breath suspense story–sexy, warm, and poignant, with aching loss and a human desire for miracles. Pickard’s best book yet.”
–Margaret Maron, author of Rituals of the Season

[triguy46]

9. A House for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul