Six books Erik Larson keeps returning to

Erik Larson's books include Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, The Devil in the White City, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing, In the Garden of Beasts, about how America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany and his daughter experienced the rising terror of Hitler’s rule, and Isaac’s Storm, about the giant hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas in 1900.

The Splendid and the Vile, Larson's latest nonfiction thriller, offers a close-up view of Winston Churchill's first year as Great Britain's prime minister.

At The Week magazine, Larson tagged six books he keeps returning to, including:

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993).

The perfect novel: atmospheric to the point where I practically have to take a shower to rinse off the brine cast up by waves crashing against the Newfoundland cliffs as our hero, Quoyle, lumbers his way from despair toward salvation.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Shipping News appears on Lissa Evans's list of six novels about nonconformist women, David Vann's six favorite books list, Rachel Seiffert's top ten list of books about troubled families, RJ Ellory's five best list of human dramas, Elise Valmorbida's list of top ten books with a happy ending, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best fishing trips.

--Marshal Zeringue