David Baldacci

David Baldacci is the best-selling author of Absolute Power, Last Man Standing, and Split Second. His newest crime thriller, Hour Game, will be published later this month.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Warner, $7). A book that has stayed with me since I first read it. Lee laid bare the sometimes unsightly bones of life in a small Southern town and also very realistically portrayed the racism that pervaded the South. A courageous story with characters that seem to me to be timeless and relevant, even in the “enlightened” 21st century.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (Ballantine, $8). It was a close call between this novel and The Cider House Rules. However, the breadth of Owen Meany’s story line and the unique way in which the story is told makes this Irving’s best.

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In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Vintage, $13). How can you not include a book that created a new genre, the so-called nonfiction novel? I read this book while sitting in a shack pulling duty as a Pinkerton security guard during college. The book wrenched me through every conceivable emotion: from terror to empathy. A classic.

Sophie’s Choice by William Styron (Vintage, $15). The triumvirate of characters here is astonishingly bold and memorable. Styron handled every conceivable hurdle a writer could (including much public criticism) in producing this novel. The touches of humor are in just the right places. Stingo’s language is just enough over the top to be absolutely believable for a young writer let loose in the big city. Nathan is intoxicatingly attractive and frightening. And Sophie has to be one of the most complex fictional characters of all time.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike (Ballantine, $15). From this first Rabbit book to the last in the series, we watch as Rabbit Angstrom’s life soars, bends, breaks, and soars again before falling to earth one last time. Can also profitably be read as an exercise in self-examination, since we all are destined to commit many of Rabbit’s mistakes ourselves.

A Confederacy of Dunces