Nevada Barr's 6 favorite books

The best-selling author and former park ranger recommends adventure stories by Victor Hugo, L.A. Meyer, and Neil Gaiman The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron (Minotaur, $14). Paul Doiron's sleuth, Mike Bowditch, is a 24-year-old Maine Fisheries and Wildlife man, and most definitely not hard-boiled. Using Bowditch's youth and vulnerability, Doiron gives us a fresh sense of the harsh realities of crime and law enforcement that years of tough guys have allowed us to forget.

In the Belly of the Bloodhound by L.A. Meyer (Graphia, $9). Meyer not only has a sure grasp of place, languages, and voices, but so seamlessly interweaves those features with the action that a reader feels it is all true and all possible and all wonderful. Of all the books in his terrific series about Jacky Faber, a 19th-century teenage seafaring adventuress, this is my favorite.

SEE ALSO: Dylan Ratigan's 6 favorite books

City of Thieves by David Benioff (Plume, $15). During the siege of Leningrad, two imprisoned men are given the chance to gain their freedom if they can accomplish a nearly impossible task: find a dozen eggs. Benioff takes the grimness of a miserable war and winds it around characters so rich the reader can't let go, even when the book is done.

World War Z by Max Brooks (Three Rivers, $8). Zombies are not my favorite dish, but by inventing an oral history of the Great Zombie War, as told by the survivors, Brooks makes the conflict feel real and immediate. This is a book less about zombies than about war, government, politics — and individual courage and cowardice.

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The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins, $8). In growing up, too many of us leave behind our love of the drama, fantasy, romance, and mystery that we devoured as kids. Gaiman gives all that back to us. For that I adore him. This tale of a boy orphaned by murderers and raised by graveyard ghosts is magic.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (Signet, $8). Jean Valjean, the sewers, the students manning the barricades — need I say more? If you haven't read Les Misérables, you need to. If you have, reread it. It never palls. Once you have been carried through the sewers of Paris on the back of a convict, life will never be as cheap as it was.

SEE ALSO: Christopher Bram's 6 favorite books

— Nevada Barr's current best seller, The Rope, is her 17th novel set in America's national parks and featuring Anna Pigeon, a park ranger with a knack for solving crimes. Barr served as a park ranger in Teas before launching the series in 1993.

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Dylan Ratigan's 6 favorite books

The passionately anti-"bankster" MSNBC host recommends authors who propose solutions for how Americans can improve their lives and nation

How by Dov Seidman (Wiley, $28). When we look at the challenges facing our nation, how we go about addressing them is usually considered the question. The premise of Seidman's 2007 book is that "how" is the solution — that the way we relate to each other is the determinative variable in the way those challenges will be resolved, in the prosperity of the country, and in the quality of our lives.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30). If Seidman is saying that how we work at our challenges is the answer, Kahneman's current best seller says, Here's how. Kahneman is a psychologist, and he asks us to understand that our brains have two systems for solving problems, and that we each need to recognize when the rational side is being overridden by the system driven by emotion.

SEE ALSO: Elizabeth Hand's 6 favorite books 

Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson (Crown, $17). This autobiography by the founder of Virgin Records and Virgin Airlines is an exhibition on how — not how to make money but how to create a life based on entrepreneurship, adventure, problem-solving, and audacity.

Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig (Twelve, $27). This book describes the single biggest barrier to America's achieving a quality "how" — the corrupting influence of money on our political system. Professor Lessig is wonderfully articulate in detailing the scope of the problem and advancing a potential solution.

SEE ALSO: Christopher Bram's 6 favorite books

The End of War by John Horgan (McSweeney's, $22). A reason for hope: Horgan's assertion is that the history of humanity is not a history of war — that war has been used as a problem-solving technique for only about 10,000 years. Because the existence of an anonymous "them" is a precondition of war, he also argues that the world's increasing interconnectedness will soon render war obsolete.

The Shadow Effect by Deepak Chopra et al. (HarperOne, $15). Chopra speaks to the need for each of us to resolve what's unresolved in our own lives before we can address unresolved issues in our communities and nation. If we do the first, achieving the larger objective will come naturally.

SEE ALSO: Henry Alford's 6 favorite books

— Dylan Ratigan's best-selling Greedy Bastards is an indictment of the "banksters," "corporate communists," and other "vampires" who are "sucking America dry."

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