If you force me to name my favorite author, I’d probably say John Grisham. Whenever he has a new book out, I buy it. I am occasionally disappointed, but not often. His consistent excellence puts him at the top of my list. I prefer his legal dramas; I’m not interested in sports. His characters have flaws, but if they do the wrong thing, it’s usually for a good reason.

I follow several series, always buying the next installment. Sometimes I’ll buy other books by the author, but if it’s not part of the beloved series, I might not have that feeling of investment.

I will always buy the next Stephanie Plum book by Janet Evanovich. These are not great literary masterpieces, but they are funny as heck, and I love the characters. I’ve read several Evanovich offerings not in this series, and they are good, but I’ll usually give them away when I’m done, whereas I can see myself going back and rereading the Plum books again and again.

I will always buy the next Kay Scarpetta book by Patricia Cornwell, even though some of them are very dense, in that the events of a day can take 400 pages to recount. But I still have to have them. I feel like I personally know the characters, and I like being inside Kay’s head as she figures everything out.

I also felt that way about Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries. I love Kinsey and her landlord and his brother and Rosie. I can picture the garage apartment and the neighborhood in Santa Teresa. And when Grafton died in 2017, I mourned that I would never read her Z book.

Other authors that I’ve followed in the past: Michael Crichton—his fiction helps me understand scientific principles. Dan Brown—I love his books’ connections to art and architecture. Anne Tyler—her quirky characters. Jan Karon–the Mitford series. Anne Lamott’s autobiographical nonfiction, until I noticed she keeps telling the same stories over and over.

I like the YA and MG books by these authors: Abigail Johnson, Kelly DeVos, Shonna Slayton, Sara Fujimura, Dusty Bowling, Paul Mosier.

Authors that I want to read more of: Celeste Ng and Emily St. John Mandel—their novels haunt me.

These are the authors who come to mind when I think of my reading addictions, but I’m sure I’ve missed a few.

Now it’s your turn. Who are the authors whose new books you just have to read? What is it about their work that you love? Share in the comments below.