Top Ten Tuesday - Top Ten All Time Favorite Authors

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic from The Broke and the Bookish is Top Ten All Time Favorite Authors.  Can I do top 100?  Or top 1000?  After much thinking and crossing out and adding and removing - seriously if this was a piece of paper it'd be ragged by this point - here is my Top Ten Favorites!

1. Agatha Christie - Well of course Agatha had to be on my list.  I started reading her in middle school or maybe early high school and haven't really stopped.  In college I kept a list of what books I had in my purse at all times just in case I happened to stopped by the used book store that I practically lived in at the time.  I still have my hodge podge collection of her books and I love them.  I tended to buy the oldest version of the book the bookstore had because their rule was 1/2 the cover price and the older the book the cheaper the cover!

2. L.M. Montgomery - So confession time - my first interaction with Anne wasn't through the book.  It was through the movie with Megan Follows.  I loved that movie and have watched it so many times that I start to cry as soon as the death scene happens several minutes before it actually happens.  After I watched the movie I decided to pick up the book which I read in one day and talked my mother into buying me the entire set when I stumbled on it in a bookstore the next day.  I spent that weekend reading the series.  And 25 years later I still love them!

3. Patricia Wentworth - About the time I discovered Agatha Christie I discovered Patricia Wentworth and I think I love her just as much.  Maude Silver is a fantastic character who really deserves more recognition.  Her first book - Grey Mask isn't a winner for me but I love any book that has the name Miss Silver in the title as well as The Girl in the Cellar, She Came Back, The Ivory Dagger and countless others.

4. Barbara Michaels - Michaels is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me.  Some one gave my mother a copy of Houses of Stone when I was around 13 and I promptly stole it from her and stayed up most of the night reading it.  From there I read what everything by her that the library had as well as haunted the used bookstores for her books.  House of Many Shadows, Shattered Silk, Vanish with the Rose, and Into the Darkness are guaranteed reading slump busters.

5. Nora Roberts - I don't remember my first Nora book though I'm think it was Tears of the Moon of the Gallaghers of Ardmore series.  That's still one of my favorite trilogies and if you haven't read it you should.  Since then I've read almost every book of hers I could get my hands on and while some are better than others she never disappoints.  Several of her books are on my Keeper Shelf including the Gallagher books, Three Fates and Key of Knowledge (which features a librarian and a writer!)

6. Deborah Crombie - I'm not sure when I started reading Deborah Crombie but her first book A Share in Death was published in 1993 so it probably wasn't much later than that.  I love Gemma and Duncan and have enjoyed watching their professional and personal relationships grow.  I think Crombie has done a fantastic job of having the characters change but still seem like them.

7. Julia Quinn - I think the first one of Quinn's I read was The Duke and I and I was immediately in love.  She's still an auto-buy for me and I have a number of her books on my Keeper Shelf including The Viscount Who Loved Me, The Secret Diary of Miss Miranda Cheever, and It Happened in London.

8.  Rosamunde Pilcher - So if I was making a list of my favorite authors Pilcher probably wouldn't make the list because I don't currently consider her a favorite.  But since we're talking about ALL TIME favorites she definitely belongs on the list.  I discovered The Shell Seekers in high school and read my copy so many times that it literally fell apart.  As did the 2nd copy I bought!

9.  Dave Barry - This is another author that belongs on the list because of the All Time thing.  Dave Barry's columns used to run in our Sunday newspapers and I always looked forward to them.  His column on his son getting hit by a car literally brought tears to my eyes (the boy was fine - he was lucky) but so many times he has made me laugh till I cried.  Dave Barry Does Japan is fantastic as are many of his other collections.

10. Tony Horwitz - I accidentally stumbled upon Baghdad Without A Map years ago and absolutely loved it.  Since then I've read everything he's ever written.  He tackles each project objectively and with a good dash of humor.  The only one of his books that I wasn't completely sold on was Confederates in the Attic but Blue Hemisphere and A Voyage Long and Strange are not to be missed.

Those are my Top Ten All Time Favorites.  Did I get any of yours?  Any authors I simply must try?