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.

SEE ALSO: Dan Chaon's 6 favorite collections of terrifying tales

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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Dan Chaon's 6 favorite collections of terrifying tales

The award-winning author admires spooky stories by Edith Wharton, Ray Bradbury, and Joyce Carol Oates

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton (Scribner, $17). Having been forced to choke down Ethan Frome in high school, I resented Wharton until I discovered her mysterious and coolly menacing stories of the supernatural. My favorite is the beautifully subtle shocker "Afterward," in which Mary Boyne is told that her house is haunted — but that she won't realize she's seen a ghost "till long, long afterward."

The October Country by Ray Bradbury (Del Rey, $8). Reading these stories is like visiting a Midwestern county fair after midnight, knowing that something bad is lurking on the darkened midway. Though Bradbury is thought of as a science fiction writer, I think these dark fantasy tales are his real achievement.

SEE ALSO: Christopher Bram's 6 favorite books

Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar (Pantheon, $15). I love the way that the uncanny slowly encroaches into the world of Cortázar's characters. The story "Blow-Up" was the basis for Michelangelo Antonioni's mod, groovy Hitchcockian film of the same name. Other stories, like "Axolotl" and "Continuity of Parks," are even more deeply hallucinatory and unsettling.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver (Vintage, $15). Just because the ghosts don't actually materialize out of the shadows doesn't mean they aren't there. Carver is classified as a realist, but the stories in his first collection are infused with such a strange, ambient sense of dread that they seem like ghost stories by default.

SEE ALSO: Dylan Ratigan's 6 favorite books

Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates (out of print). Oates can do anything, but this collection of unsettling psychological horror stories distills some of her best tricks. "Extenuating Circumstances" burrows so deeply into the character of a terrifyingly crazy mother that you want to hide your eyes at the end.

Open Secrets by Alice Munro (Vintage, $15). Munro is a naturalistic writer if there ever was one, but she's fascinated by mystery, too. As the title suggests, these stories explore the unknown and unexplainable in the lives of ordinary people, and show how truly mystifying and spooky the workings of the human heart can be. There's at least one (maybe two) actual ghosts tucked into these pages, too.

SEE ALSO: Henry Alford's 6 favorite books

— Dan Chaon is the award-winning author of Await Your Reply and Among the Missing. Several suspenseful and haunting new stories appear in his latest book, Stay Awake.

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Dan Chaon's 6 favorite collections of terrifying tales

The award-winning author admires spooky stories by Edith Wharton, Ray Bradbury, and Joyce Carol Oates

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton (Scribner, $17). Having been forced to choke down Ethan Frome in high school, I resented Wharton until I discovered her mysterious and coolly menacing stories of the supernatural. My favorite is the beautifully subtle shocker "Afterward," in which Mary Boyne is told that her house is haunted — but that she won't realize she's seen a ghost "till long, long afterward."

The October Country by Ray Bradbury (Del Rey, $8). Reading these stories is like visiting a Midwestern county fair after midnight, knowing that something bad is lurking on the darkened midway. Though Bradbury is thought of as a science fiction writer, I think these dark fantasy tales are his real achievement.

SEE ALSO: Christopher Bram's 6 favorite books

Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar (Pantheon, $15). I love the way that the uncanny slowly encroaches into the world of Cortázar's characters. The story "Blow-Up" was the basis for Michelangelo Antonioni's mod, groovy Hitchcockian film of the same name. Other stories, like "Axolotl" and "Continuity of Parks," are even more deeply hallucinatory and unsettling.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver (Vintage, $15). Just because the ghosts don't actually materialize out of the shadows doesn't mean they aren't there. Carver is classified as a realist, but the stories in his first collection are infused with such a strange, ambient sense of dread that they seem like ghost stories by default.

SEE ALSO: Dylan Ratigan's 6 favorite books

Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates (out of print). Oates can do anything, but this collection of unsettling psychological horror stories distills some of her best tricks. "Extenuating Circumstances" burrows so deeply into the character of a terrifyingly crazy mother that you want to hide your eyes at the end.

Open Secrets by Alice Munro (Vintage, $15). Munro is a naturalistic writer if there ever was one, but she's fascinated by mystery, too. As the title suggests, these stories explore the unknown and unexplainable in the lives of ordinary people, and show how truly mystifying and spooky the workings of the human heart can be. There's at least one (maybe two) actual ghosts tucked into these pages, too.

SEE ALSO: Henry Alford's 6 favorite books

— Dan Chaon is the award-winning author of Await Your Reply and Among the Missing. Several suspenseful and haunting new stories appear in his latest book, Stay Awake.

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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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