This is a collection of just a few of my favorite authors. I'm fortunate to have a large library, collected over many years, and I've initially picked authors whose writings have brought me back for more. I'll probably add to the list fom time to time. I am not including the well know favorites like Steinbeck, Hemingway, Poe, Christie and Clemens. If you made it through high school you've probably came across those folks and their works.
 
Most of the authors in my list are still actively writing. However, I did elect to include two authors who have given me great joy over the years, but, sadly, are no longer with us. Jean Shepherd and Sigurd Olsen may not be names as easily recognized as the other masters. but certainly deserve to be read and thoroughly enjoyed. Their books are occasionally available on Amazon or ebay.
 
The list is presented in no particular order. Listing each author's books would be a huge endeavor, so I've chose to give a brief outline of the authors' topics and a bit of background. I hope I can entice you to check these authors out.
 
Ed. Note: If all else fails, go to Google Books and enter the author's name.
 
Enjoy!
 

 
· Jean Shepherd · 
 
Topics: Humor, Nostalgia, Midwest, Growing up in the 1940's  
Website: (There is no totally representative website for Jean Sheperd, but a number of his admirers have info pages for him, easily searchable)  
Born: July 26, 1921 in Chicago, Illinois, Died: October 16, 1999 at Sanibel Island, Florida
 
Jean Shepherd wrote largely about his background being raised in the Hammond, Indiana area with his father working the steel mills.

 
The movie "CHRISTMAS STORY" about Ralphie Parker, the young boy who wanted a Daisy Red Ryder BB rifle more than anything else. was the inspiration from Jean Sheperd by his book of the same name. Jean was the narration voice as Ralphie as an adult throughout the movie.
 
OLLIE HOPNOODLE'S HAVEN OF BLISS, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN HEARTH, THE GREAT AMERICAN FOURTH OF JULY were movies also produced. One featured the family going on an ill-fated fishing vacation in Wisconsin including a 4th of July celebration gone bad.
 
I read these books many years prior to the movies. The artistry of telling a funny story with humor. wit, satire and subtlty were special lessons I've learned from the skills of yarn-spinning by Mr. Shepherd. Not to mention the belly laughs and giant smiles as his tales reminded me of my own youth.
 
· Randy Wayne White · 
 
Topics: Mystery, Action-Adventure, South Florida, South America  
 Website: Randy Wayne White Homepage
 
Randy Wayne White, multiple award winning author, has been a light tackle fishing guide at Tarpon Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, with thousands of charters to his credit. He was also a monthly columnist for Outside Magazine and traveled the world, writing about natural history, archaeology, anthropology, adventure travel and politics. He drew upon these experiences to create Doc Ford, a mild-natured marine biologist who has a covert backgroud. Doc Ford frequently finds himself in dangerous circumstances in an attempt to rescue people or solve criminal mysteries, usually involving the South Florida gulf and marine environment that he knows so well. Most of this series of Doc's adventures will involve some unusual characters living in boats on the nearby bay. The action builds to become fast and furious, and may offer an unexpected twist.
 
White also has written an assortment of essays and articles relating to his travels an experiences, which are not part of the fictional Doc Ford series, often involving trips to South America.
 
In what is becoming a tradition for South Florida authors, White is cynical of the development and exploitation that has increasingly occurred in this area, so expect to find some of this criticism in much of his work.
 
I was introduced to RWW's books by my sister and brother-in-law, who live near Tampa, but frequent Sanibel Island. They initially encountered Randy at local bookstore signings, and have since run into him at the "Doc Ford Sanibel Rum Bar & Grille" on Sanibel Island. They have generously picked up autographed copies of many of his books to present me as birthday gifts.
 
I've totally enjoyed the Doc Ford series, with only one recent exception, which I found hard to follow due to continuity problems, uneccessary repetion and established characters who acted out-of-character without suitable explanation. In the author's defense, this book was written following a hurricane that destroyed his home. I think that the discontinuity in his life at that time was introduced in the book. His following book, which was a partnered effort with one of his sons, seems to be back on track.
 
His only drawback is that he has a dislike or distain for people from Wisconsin and Indiana....probably because he was born and raised in Ohio, and developed a case of "state envy" there!
 
As with most main character based series, you get the best development from reading the series from the beginning of the series. But if that's not possible, you'll still get a ton of pleasure from meeting Doc Ford and the quirky characters at Dinkin's Bay.
 
· Clive Cussler · 
 
Topics: Mystery, Action-Adventure, Historical, Nautical, Aircraft, Antique Cars  
 Website: Clive Cussler at Penguin Books
 Website: The Numa Website
 
Self-proclaimed Author, Adventurer and Car Collector Extraordinaire, Clive Cussler developed the character of Dirk Pitt, who first appeared in 1973. Pitt is a charismatic hero. He is a man of amazing abilities, a pilot capable of flying most fixed and rotating wing aircraft, a sailor of vast experience, a diver and oceanographer and pilot of an assortment of deep sea submersible vehicles, and collector of antique aircraft and cars (much like the author). He never fails to be a lady magnet. The Dik Pitt novels usually share one theme; a well researched historical event leads off the story, followed by a pushed-to-the-limit, but plausibly argumented supposition of the subsequent outcome. The modern-day adventure for Dirk will ultimately cross paths with this historical to lead to the ultimate adventure.
 
Dirk Pitt's character needed an appropriate employer, so Cussler provided NUMA, the National Underwater & Marine Agency, a oceanographic resaerch organization funded by the US government, but occasionally called in to provide clandestine or covert operations under the guise of their research role. Add a group of likeable recurring characters create a successful mix that has spawned a large number of books in the Dirk Pitt Novel series.
 
Cussler wrote 18 original Dirk Pitt novels, and the proceeds allowed him to establish a real-life NUMA, a non-profit organization that dedicates itself to American maritime and naval history. Cussler and his crew of marine experts and NUMA volunteers have discovered over 60 historically significant underwater wreck sites. After verifying their finds, the real NUMA turns the rights to the artifacts over to non-profits, universities, or government entities all over the world. Some of these finds include the C.S.S. Hunley, best known as the first submarine to sink a ship in battle; the Housatonic, the ship the Hunley sank; the U-20, the U-boat that sank the Lusitania; the Cumberland, sunk by the famous ironclad, Merrimack; the Confederate raider Florida; the Navy airship, Akron; the Republic of Texas Navy warship, Zavala, found under a parking lot in Galveston, Texas; and the remains of the Carpathia, the valiant ship that braved icebergs to rescue the survivor's of the Titanic. Cussler has written two books about these non-fiction adventures.
 
Cussler wrote several novels featuring a new prime character, Kurt Austin, with co-author Paul Kempecos. He also co-wrote the Oregon Files with Jack Du Brul or with Craig Dirgo. I found these co-authored books to be cumbersome and disappointing, due to obvious discontinuity, variations in writing styles and character drift. It became obvious that there was a writing style, communication and continuity problem with this co-authoring endeavor. However, I have just begun to read the newest of these efforts, this time with his son, Dirk Cussler as co-author. So far I have found no indication of the previous problems with co-authoring. Maybe this father-son combination is a winner.
 

 
· Sigurd F. Olson · 
 
Topics: Wisconsin, Nature, Minnesota Wilderness Areas, Historical, Camping, Canoeing,
Wilderness Experience, Conservation  
 Website: Information about Sigurd Olson
 
Born: April 4, 1899 in Chicago, Illinois, Died: January 13, 1982
 
Sigurd Olsen spent most of his youth in Northern Wisconsin where he developed a love for nature and the wilderness. He earned a degree in geology and a master's in animal ecologyIn 1923 he moved to Ely, Minnesota, then a mining town on the iron-rich Vermillion Range. He began teaching high school and then junior college in Ely, and in 1936 became dean of that college. In 1947 he left the college and embarked on a career of full time writing and professional conservatioism.
 
Sigurd Olson wrote from almost a spirtual perspective of the wilderness that he loved. The nearby Superior-Quetico wilderness area became his personal world to explore and write about, and he was instrumental in keeping motorized vehicles out of the Superior-Quetico Wilderness and in getting the national Wilderness Act, which became law in 1964 and e stablished the U.S. wilderness preservation system.
 
He wrote "The movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind. Silence is part of it, and the sounds of lapping water, bird songs, and wind in the trees. It is part of the medium through which it floats, the sky, the water, the shores....There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known.". He is also qouted as saying " "I have discovered in a lifetime of traveling in primitive regions, a lifetime of seeing people living in the wilderness and using it, that there is a hard core of wilderness need in everyone, a core that makes its spiritual values a basic human necessity. There is no hiding it....Unless we can preserve places where the endless spiritual needs of man can be fulfilled and nourished, we will destroy our culture and ourselves".
 
Sigurd Olson's lyrical, unpretentious, almost poetic writing style was my inspiration to spend several summers paddling hundreds of miles through the lakes and streams of the Superior-Quetico. I have the nine books by SF, all in hardcover, and a few signed by the author, picked up at a local Ely outfitter many years back at the beginning of a canoe trip.
 

 
·  Tony Hillerman · 
 
Topics: Mystery, American Southwest, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Tribal Police, Native American Spirituality and Religion, Historical  
 Website: The Official Harper Books Tony Hillerman Site
 Website:The Unofficial Tony Hillerman Homepage
 
Tony Hillerman, award winning author of detective fiction and non-fiction books, was born in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma in 1925, saw combat in WWII and earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. It was during the war were he learned of the class system that existed in the U.S. military. After the war he became a journalist until 1962. He earned a Master's degree moving on to teach journalism from 1966 to 1987 at UNM in Albuquerque.
 
Hillerman's early mystery/detective novels featured Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo tribal police. Leaphorn lives in modern-day practicality and sketicism, and he understands the sociological interaction of the his native people and the white man. He frequently investigates a puzzling major crime while having to take care of the day-to-day business of dealing with lesser crimes. But the two are tied together, and solving the lesser crimes provides the key to solving the major one. Throughout his novels, Hillerman uses the hunt for the solution to crime as a means of introducing the readers to the people, lifestyle, beliefs, history and environment of this region. After the first several novels, Hillerman introduced another main character, Jim Chee. Although also a member of the tribal police, Chee is more of a traditional Navajo, believing in the powers of rituals and native religious customs, and it it through Chee that Hillerman introduces the reader to this aspect of the lives of these people.
 
Hillerman is a master at taking seemingly disjointed situations and smoothly weaving them into non-stop action. The crime solving is also fluid story telling, and involves many unexpected twists that makes any Hillerman novel a true page turner.