Catherine Crier

Catherine Crier is a former judge, host of Catherine Crier Live on Court TV, and author of The Case Against Lawyers (Broadway, $24), published earlier this year.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller (Random House, $25). This is a startlingly intimate and brutally honest portrait of growing up in tragic yet remarkable times. British by birth, the author grew up in war-torn Rhodesia with a family as volatile as her surroundings. Fuller has the freshest voice and style of any writer I’ve encountered in years.

An Instance at the Fingerpost by Iain Pears (Berkley Publishing Group, $8). If you love both thrillers and historical novels, this is the best combination I know of. Intricate and intellectual, this work paints an extraordinary portrait of 17th-century England, in which fascinating characters confront mystery and political intrigue that will challenge the reader until the final page.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoevski (Bantam Doubleday Dell, $7). This murder mystery famously depicts the psychological interplay between criminal and investigator as a moth to the flame. In a true thriller, the killer Raskolnikov wrestles literally and figuratively with the consequence of violating moral law.

Four Great Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, MacBeth by William Shakespeare (NAL, $7). Even more than the Russians, Shakespeare best portrays the struggle between good and evil, between damnation and redemption. For me, this collection will remain the ultimate depiction of the complexities of the human mind and spirit.

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (Bantam Books, $8). Open this book to any page and you will swear it was written yesterday. Tocqueville is eerily prescient as he describes the strengths and weaknesses of the American people and the challenges that would confront our young nation.

The Tao of Physics