Auto-Buy Authors

This is a question I've been asking myself on and off for several weeks now. What are "auto-buy" authors, you ask? They are the crème de la crème-- the authors that, when you hear they've got a new book coming out, you know you're going to buy it regardless what it's about. They're the authors you recommend to anyone who asks-- or anyone who'll listen. You devour their books with a passion... and then regret that you read them so quickly and now have a long wait till the next one. That's what an auto-buy author is.

As I compiled my list, I discovered that it had to be refined. There are some authors who write several series, but I may only be passionate about one, so I can't say they're auto-buy; I've got to find out to which series the new book belongs.

As I look at the authors' names I've scribbled down on a small piece of paper, I see that they all have things in common: their plots, their characters, and their settings all blend into potent brews that i simply cannot resist.

Here, for good or ill, is my list of auto-buy authors (in no particular order). Perhaps some of mine are on your own lists as well.

Deborah Crombie

I fell in love with Deborah Crombie's books from the very first one. She's written fourteen books in the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series. This American's a bit unusual in that she lives in Texas but writes about England. When my British husband asked me for a book recommendation and I suggested Crombie, I was interested to see what he thought of them. Denis gobbled them up even quicker than I did, which put an insider's stamp of approval on her books. (Not that it matters; I'd keep on reading them anyway!)

The settings she chooses and the stories she tells are marvelous, but what puts her on my Auto-Buy List is her characters. Duncan and Gemma's relationship grows and changes over the course of the books. They are real people facing real problems. Midway through the series, they stopped being fictional characters to me and became living, breathing people.

Nevada Barr

Way back when, someone recommended Nevada Barr as an author I might enjoy. I've now been with her through seventeen books featuring National Park Service law enforcement officer Anna Pigeon.

In her line of work, Anna has taken me back and forth across the United States visiting several of our wonderful national parks and recreation areas. Wildlife and the outdoors both mean a great deal to me, and Anna allows me my nature fix in her own inimitable way.

Like all memorable characters, she never remains static. She changes and adapts as a result of all her experiences, and I love following her progress through each book.

Betty Webb

Betty Webb writes two very different series, and both of them are on my Auto-Buy List.

Her seven-book series featuring Scottsdale, Arizona private detective Lena Jones is hard-edged and tackles some very important (and sometimes little known) issues. Lena opens my eyes and my heart, not only to the cases she solves, but to the state in which I live, and to Lena herself and her troubled past.

For the lighter side of Betty, I've come to love her Gunn Zoo series featuring Teddy Bentley, a zookeeper living on a houseboat on the central coast of California. With Teddy, I get to laugh and to learn about some fascinating animals.

Craig Johnson

Craig Johnson writes the wonderful series featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming. My love affair with his writing began from almost the very first page of The Cold Dish and has grown stronger through each of the seven books that have followed it.

Once again, the stories and the setting are vivid, but Johnson's ensemble cast is absolutely sublime. Humor, heartbreak, honesty and integrity. If I'm ever kidnapped, I want Walt Longmire coming to get me. I know he'd get the job done. My only regret is that he's fictional and I can't vote for him!

Colin Cotterill

Like Betty Webb, Colin Cotterill writes two series that I love.

Through eight books set in 1970s Laos, I've come to adore Dr. Siri Paiboun, the country's septuagenarian National Coroner, his able Nurse Dtui, and his morgue assistant Mr. Geung. I get to learn about life in a poor Southeast Asian Communist country while I'm trying to find out if I'm as smart as the wily Dr. Siri in knowing what's really going on.

Cotterill's newest series is set in rural southern Thailand where Jimm Juree, a former crime reporter for the Chang Mai Daily Mail, has moved with her wacky and wonderful family. I'm used to reading books set in the cities of Southeast Asia, so the chance to learn about rural Thai life is fun.

The strength in both series? Cotterill's wonderful ensemble casts of characters, his honesty and humor, and his love for his creations.

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles does write a mystery series featuring Bill Slider, but it's her thirty-four volume historical fiction series called the Morland Dynasty that I'm nutty about.

The series follows one family-- the Morlands-- from the time of Richard III in 1434 and is supposed to end with World War II. (Right now the series is in the 1920s.) Earlier volumes have floorplans of Morland Place (just outside York) showing how it changes with each generation. Harrod-Eagles brings the history to life through her generations of characters, and each book has given me characters to love or to hate with equal intensity.

As I've sat here typing this post, I've been adding more Auto-Buy Authors to my list, so this shows all the signs of turning into a series. I'm going to end this installment of my list with two authors whose books I'd automatically buy... if they were still writing.

In the 1980s and 1990s, British author Lyn Macdonald spent thousands of hours researching written first-hand accounts of World War I. She then spoke to as many survivors of the horror of that war as she could find, capturing oral history that is beyond price. Her books--1914, 1915: The Death of Innocence, The Roses of No Man's Land, To the Last Man, Somme, and They Called It Passchendaele--are among the very best I've ever read about military history because they're not about kings and generals. They are about the common soldiers trying to survive in the trenches; they are about the nurses and doctors and ambulance drivers who risked their lives to save others. To read these stories... this history... told in these people's own words for me was, quite simply, incredibly powerful and mind-altering.

Suzanne Massie

Suzanne Massie wrote two books about Russian cultural history that I'll only turn loose of once someone's pried them out of my cold, dead fingers. Like Lyn Macdonald, if she were still writing, I'd still be buying.

Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia brings pre-Revolutionary Russia to aching, wonderful life. As I read, Massie created the most vivid pictures in my mind-- pictures that were also accompanied by sounds and smells. I could also feel the cold, and touch various surfaces in beautifully furnished rooms. It's rare that a book affects all my senses to such a degree, and when I find one that does, I get my hands on it and keep it close.

What is so wonderful is that Suzanne Massie did it not once but twice when I bought my copy of Pavlovsk: The Life of a Russian Palace. I've walked into many old houses that "spoke" to me. Massie took me through a splendid palace and let me listen as it told me its secrets. It's a journey that I will never forget. So many of the Russians Massie interviewed for this book quoted a line from Dostoyevsky-- "Beauty will save the world." After reading about Pavlovsk, I believe that very well may be true.

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It is my hope that you'll give this some thought and leave a comment (or write your own post!) telling me what your Auto-Buy Authors are. As you can see, not all of mine are crime fiction writers, so there's no need for yours to be either. If you do decide to write your own post, please please please leave me a comment letting me know so I can visit your blog and read your list!

Do we share some of the same Auto-Buy Authors? Which ones are they? Did I happen to persuade you to try any of mine? Which ones?  I know, I know-- questions, questions! I'll shut up now because I really want to know the authors' names on your lists!

The Restless Sea by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Title: The Restless Sea
Author: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
ISBN: 9780751533446
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group, 2005
Mass Market Paperback, 512 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, #27 Morland Dynasty series
Rating: A-
Source: Purchased at The Poisoned Pen.

First Line: On the evening on which Mr. and Mrs. Edward Morland of Maystone Villa, Clifton, were to give the first dinner party of their married lives, Ned arrived home late.

For those of you who are not acquainted with this series of books, you may think that the number 27 above is a typo. It isn't. I savor these books slowly so I'll never run out. As a result there are actually 32 volumes in this series. (I own volumes 1 - 30.)

The Morland Dynasty series, as it's called, begins in England at the time of Richard III, and it is the author's hope that it will continue through to the end of World War II. She's been having publisher problems, so keep your fingers crossed.

In The Restless Sea it is 1912. Jessie and childhood friend Violet are getting used to married life. Jack is now working with Thomas Sopwith on aeroplane design, and he's still got terrible taste in women. Teddy Morland has provided all the soft furnishings for the launch of the Titanic, and as a result he's been given free passage on her maiden voyage.

For anyone with any memory of history at all, what happens to the Titanic is known. What is also known is that soon all these people will be immersed in World War I. One of the major reasons why I love this series is because Harrod-Eagles personalizes history. She gives us a family, she puts this family in the midst of events, and we see these events from an entirely new perspective. The sinking of the Titanic takes on new meaning when a reader "knows" someone on board the ship:

Those who had been saved had no choice but to listen to those who were doomed, with nothing to distract the mind from the knowledge that the crying was gradually fading away, as one by one they died, frozen to death, alone in the black water.

The Restless Sea is another strong entry in this long-running series, and World War I looming large in the shadows does create tension. Since some of the generations span more than one book, it would be a good idea to read them in order. Be brave. Like me, you'll always have something good waiting for you on your shelves.

The first three or four books were published in the United States back in the 1980s, and I fell in love with them. When I could no longer find any new additions to the series, I assumed that there were no more. It wasn't until the end of the 1990s that I learned that the series had never stopped and was still going strong. My then-fiance located all the books I was missing in the UK and either mailed them to me or delivered them in person. After some creative shelving, they all fit on one shelf in my library.

Harrod-Eagles makes history live by making it personal. Like all families, there are going to be characters that you can't stand and characters that you love. And like all families, the bad things don't always happen to the characters you don't like; there are even characters that don't interest you one way or the other. All the appearance of real life, eh?

Reading this series from the beginning is like becoming a member of the Morland family. Morland Place is outside of York, and the first several books in the series included floor plans that let us see how the house changed throughout the generations.

Now the books contain family trees to help us remember how all the characters are connected. One of the author's strengths is her skill in characterization-- proof being that I seldom, if ever, refer to the family tree in order to keep everyone straight. After 27 books, I'm evidently a Morland by adoption.

If you love large, sprawling, generational, historical fiction sagas, you can't go wrong with this series. You won't like some books as well as you do others because of the changing characters and time periods, but taken as a whole, this series is remarkable. And wonderful.

If you'd like to give this series a try, click on the link to the author's website at the top of this review. You'll find all the information you need under the Morland Dynasty tab.

Buy at Amazon.
Buy at The Book Depository.
Buy at an Indie Bookseller.

REVIEW: The Dream Kingdom

Title: The Dream Kingdom
Author: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Historical Fiction
Setting: England 1908-1910
Series: #26
Rating: A

First Line: In a taxi-cab rattling through London in the small hours, Jessie Compton sat up, wide awake, astonished that her two companions could be half asleep (in the case of her friend Lady Violet Winchmore) or frankly dozing (as was their chaperone Miss Miller, Violet's former governess).

Beginning this series is an investment in time and pleasure. Currently numbered at thirty volumes, it is Harrod-Eagles' ambitious task to take a fictional family in Yorkshire from the time of Richard III all the way to the present day. If you like architecture, several volumes have floor plans of the house as it changes over the years. If you like genealogy, there's an ancestral chart included in each. Although there are a lot of characters, these books attest to the author's skill as a writer because each is different, each is fully drawn, and each is memorable.

I began reading this series in the 1980s when the first five volumes were published in this country. When I could no longer find them, I assumed that there were no more. It wasn't until 2000 that I discovered that she'd been writing all along, and it's been my pleasure to get caught up. I hoard them though, and parcel them out sparingly so I don't run out before the next book is in print!

The Dream Kingdom takes place during the years 1908-1910 when England was in a period of golden summer. All things were bright and beautiful, and it seemed that everything would go on like this forever. Two girls in the family have their London Season. One of the young men realizes a dream to get into the brand-new field of aviation. One of the women is an ardent Suffragette. The current owner of Morland Place finds his business doing quite well with a new contract from the White Star Line for the soft furnishings for the Olympic and Titanic. He also brings home a new wife which throws his sister into a tailspin because she knows there can't be two mistresses of the same house.

This series has it all for me: history, wonderful characters, a vivid setting...I can't get enough!