In Beatriz Williams' new novel, Under the Stars, a mother and daughter are drawn into an 1840s mystery by the discovery of a cache of paintings. Below, the best-selling author of Husbands and Lovers and The Summer Wives names works that have shaped her own.
'The Aubrey-Maturin novels' by Patrick O'Brian (1969–2004)
Among its manifold dazzling virtues, O'Brian's 20-volume saga of a Royal Navy captain and his ship's surgeon so effortlessly evokes life aboard a warship during the Napoleonic era, and the humanity of those aboard, that you experience the story as the characters do. I'm rereading the entire series for the fifth time since I picked up Master and Commander as an undergrad, and my reaction remains the same: This is how you write historical fiction. Buy it here.
'Persuasion' by Jane Austen (1817)
"Ten thousand a year" is all very sexy, as Pride and Prejudice readers know. But this tender, bittersweet story of lovers reunited years after an agonizing rupture will always be my favorite Austen, my blueprint for true love. Buy it here.
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'The Palliser novels' by Anthony Trollope (1865–80)
Nobody else in my MBA class was procrasti-reading Trollope instead of case studies, but then what else could have better prepared me for my career than this master class in creating a fictional universe of beloved characters? Buy it here.
'Testament of Youth' by Vera Brittain (1933)
I had to abandon this harrowing First World War memoir midway through, after an enemy sniper kills the author's fiancé. Eventually—like Brittain herself—I picked myself up and carried on with the narrative, and its raw emotional truth populated my understanding of history with real human beings. Buy it here.
'Their Eyes Were Watching God' by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
We swooned over Gatsby glamour in high school, but it was Hurston's shattering novel about a Black woman facing down sexual and racial politics in early 20th-century Florida that opened my ears to the virtuoso power of voice to convey character and ideas. Buy it here.
'Heart of the Matter' by Emily Giffin (2010)
On the face of it, this novel of an affair in the Boston affluburbs is pure literary catnip. But Giffin commits so honestly to each woman's perspective, electrified by the punch of visceral detail, she altered the way I think and write about human relationships, whether historical or contemporary. Buy it here.
