our own list of 20 favorite authors

[Cynthia]

Who do you like best? And don't worry, it doesn't have to be in order of preference, unless you want it to be. And you can change and update your list by clicking "edit", below. Needless to say, you needn't limit yourself to 20.

[Cynthia]

These are not necessarily in order of preference.
1) Trollope
2) Dumas
3) Dorothy Sayers
4) Agatha Christie
5) Angela Thirkell
6) Elizabeth Peters
7) Arturo Perez Reverte
8) Georges Simenon
9) Fred Vargas
10) Jane Austen
11) Tolstoy
12) Roald Dahl
13) Bruce Alexander
14) Wilkie Collins
15) Rex Stout
16) Dashiell Hammett
17) Thomas Pynchon
18) Janet Evanovitch (sorry...)
19) Jasper Fforde
20) Margery Allingham
21) Anthony Bourdaine
22) Audrey Niffenegger
23) Georgette Heyer
24) Bill Bryson

[Patrick]

Definitely not in any order at all:

1. Raymond Chandler
2. John Nichols
3. Donald Westlake
4. Ed McBain
5. James Ellroy
6. Ian Rankin
7. HL Mencken
8. Jimmy Breslin
9. Mike Royko
10. AJ Liebling
11. Hunter Thompson
12. Tom Wolfe
13. Ngaio Marsh
14. PD James
15. Lawrence Block
16. CS Lewis (but no Narnia)
17. Arthur Ransome
18. Kenneth Grahame (Wind in the Willows guy)
19. Dorothy Sayers
20. Lester Bangs

[Smiley]

1. George Orwell
2. Umberto Eco
3. Muriel Spark
4. Paul Johnson
5. Bertrand Russell
6. Alain de Botton
7. V.S. Prittchet
8. H.E. Bates
9. Italo Calvino
10. John le Carre
11. Graham Greene
12. Nevil Shute
13. R.K. Narayan
14. Naguib Mafouz
15. Alan Bennett
16. Primo Levi
17. Robert Graves
18. Evelyn Waugh
19. Peter Ackroyd
20. John Sutherland

[Nicole]

random order

1. Jane Austen
2. Richard Brautigan
3. John Gardner
4. Mikhail Bulgakov
5. Ursula K. LeGuin
6. Henning Mankell
7. W. Somerset Maugham
6. Haruki Murakami
7. Gabrial Marcia Marquez
8. A.S. Byatt
9. Henry James
10. Roald Dahl
11. Gustav Flaubert
12. Arundhati Roy
13. William Thackery
14. Denise Levertov
15. Douglas Adams
16. E.M. Forster
17. Milan Kundera
18. Margret Atwood
19. Stella Gibbons
20. Leo Tolstoy (only read half of Anna K., but thought it was amazingly written)