Book: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Title: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Author: Muriel Barbury
Published: 2005 (2008 in the US)
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 325
Summary on Goodreads: We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

Check out the author's other book: Gourmet Rhapsody

Book: The Sea

Title: The Sea
Author: John Banville
Published: 2005
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 195
Summary on Goodreads: In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel -- among the finest we have had from this masterful writer. 

Note: Won the Man Booker Prize and others in 2005

Also check out some of the author's other books: The Freddie Montgomery Trilogy
The Untouchable
Ancient Light
The Infinities

Series: The Indian in the Cupboard

Series: Indian in the Cupboard
Author: Lynne Reid Banks
Started: 1980
Category: Childrens/Middle-Grade
Genre: Magical Realism
Order of Books: The Indian in the Cupboard
The Return of the Indian
The Secret of the Indian
The Mystery of the Cubboard
The Key to the Indian
Summary of first book on Goodreads: At first, Omri is unimpressed with the plastic Indian toy he is given for his birthday. But when he puts it in his old cupboard and turns the key, something extraordinary happens that will change Omri's life for ever. 
For Little Bull, the Iroquois Indian brave, comes to life...

Book: The Fairy Rebel

Title: The Fairy Rebel
Author: Lynne Reid Banks
Published: 1985
Category: Childrens/Middle-grade
Genre: Fantasy, Faeries
Pages: 117
Summary on Goodreads: The Fairy Queen strictly forbids fairies from using their magic power on humans. But after Tiki accidentally meets Jan, a woman who is desperate for a baby daughter, she finds it impossible to resist fulfilling her wish. Now up against the dark and vicious power of evil, this fairy rebel must face the Queen's fury with frightening and possibly fatal results.

Book: The Wasp Factory

Title: The Wasp Factory
Author: Iain Banks
Published: 1984
Category: Adult/YA (can count as both)
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 184
Summary on Goodreads: Frank — no ordinary sixteen-year-old — lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago; his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return — an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.

If you like this, check out the author's many other books: The Crow Road
Complicity
The Bridge
Whit
Espedair Street
Dead Air
The Business
Walking On Glass
The Steep Approach to Garbadale
and many more, the author has written almost thirty books

Book: The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing

Title: The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing
Author: Melissa Bank
Published: 1998
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Romance
Pages: 288
Summary on Goodreads: Generous-hearted and wickedly insightful, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, and relationships as well as the treacherous waters of the workplace. With an unforgettable comic touch, Bank skillfully teases out issues of the heart, puts a new spin on the mating dance, and captures in perfect pitch what it's like to be a young woman coming of age in America today.

Also check out the author's other book: The Wonder Spot

Series: Chasing Vermeer

Series: Chasing Vermeer
Author: Blue Balliett
Category: Childrens/Middle-Grade
Started: 2004
Genre: Mystery
Order of Books: Chasing Vermeer
The Wrights
The Calder Game
Pieces and Players
Summary of first book on Goodreads: A puzzling art theft is solved by two sixth-grade sleuths in a first-rate first novel by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Series of Unfortunate Events artist Brett Helquist. Cut from similar cloth to The Da Vinci Code while harkening back to E. L. Konigsburg and Agatha Christie, Balliett's book follows young Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay as they piece together separate, seemingly disconnected events to locate The Lady Writing, a Vermeer painting that gets stolen en route to Chicago's Art Institute. Going on the theory that there are no coincidences, the two wonder about the link between their teacher's statements, Petra's dreams, a book Petra finds in the library, and other clues that set the reader guessing as to their significance as well. But after they learn of the culprit's aim to correct untruths about Vermeer's life and art -- which spurs them into full-throttle detective work -- the pieces all come together in a brilliant ending sure to make readers cheer, "Ah ha!"

Author: James Baldwin

Author: James Baldwin
Category: Modern Classic, Non-Fiction
Mostly wrote: during the 50s and 60s, a few during the 70s
Genre mostly wrote: Realistic Fiction, Essays
Some of His Major Books: Go Tell It on the Mountain
Giovanni's Room
Notes of a Native Son
The Fire Next Time
Another Country
If Beale Street Could Talk
Sonny's Blues
Going to Meet the Man
Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone
Nobody Knows My Name

Book: Absolute Power

Title: Absolute Power
Author: David Baldacci
Published: 1995
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Politics, Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 550
Summary on Goodreads: A grizzled professional cat burglar gets trapped inside the bedroom closet of one of the world's richest men, only to witness, through a one-way mirror, two Secret Service agents kill the billionaire's trampy young wife as she tries to fight off the drunken sexual advances of the nation's chief executive. Running for his life, but not before he picks up a bloodstained letter opener that puts the president at the scene of the crime, the burglar becomes the target of a clandestine manhunt orchestrated by leading members of the executive branch.

Meanwhile, Jack Graham, once a public defender and now a high-powered corporate attorney, gets drawn into the case because the on-the-lam burglar just happens to be the father of his former financee, a crusading Virginia prosecutor. 

Embroidering the narrative through assorted plot whorls are the hero's broken romance; his conflict over selling out for financial success; the prosecutor's confused love-hate for her burglar father; the relentless investigation by a northern Virginia career cop; the dilemma of government agents trapped in a moral catch-22; the amoral ambitions of a sexy White House Chief of Staff; and the old burglar's determination to bring down the ruthless president. 

Meanwhile, lurking at the novel's center like a venomous spider is the sociopathic president.

Also check out Baldacci's many other books (he's written over fifty), which all tend to fall under political thriller/mystery:

Camel Club series

Sean King and Michelle Maxwell series

Will Robbie series

John Puller series

A. Shaw books

and several other standalones

Trilogy: The Prince of Nothing

Trilogy: The Prince of Nothing
Author: R. Scott Bakker
Order of Books: The Darkness That Comes Before
The Warrior Prophet
The Thousandfold Thought
Category: Adult
Started: 2003
Genre: Fantasy
Summary of the first book on Goodreads: Strikingly original in its conception, ambitious in scope, with characters engrossingly and vividly drawn, the first book in R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series creates a remarkable world from whole cloth-its language and classes of people, its cities, religions, mysteries, taboos, and rituals-the kind of all-embracing universe Tolkien and Herbert created unforgettably in the epic fantasies The Lord of the Rings and Dune. It's a world scarred by an apocalyptic past, evoking a time both two thousand years past and two thousand years into the future, as untold thousands gather for a crusade. Among them, two men and two women are ensnared by a mysterious traveler, Anasûrimbor Kellhus-part warrior, part philosopher, part sorcerous, charismatic presence-from lands long thought dead. The Darkness That Comes Before is a history of this great holy war, and like all histories, the survivors write its conclusion. 

Book: The Mezzanine

Title: The Mezzanine
Author: Nicholson Baker
Published: 1988
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 135
Summary on Goodreads: In his startling, witty, and inexhaustibly inventive first novel—first published in 1986 and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback—the author of Vox and The Fermata uses a one-story escalator ride as the occasion for a dazzling reappraisal of everyday objects and rituals. From the humble milk carton to the act of tying one’s shoes, The Mezzanine at once defamiliarizes the familiar world and endows it with loopy and euphoric poetry. Nicholson Baker’s accounts of the ordinary become extraordinary through his sharp storytelling and his unconventional, conversational style. At first glance, The Mezzanine appears to be a book about nothing. In reality, it is a brilliant celebration of things, simultaneously demonstrating the value of reflection and the importance of everyday human human experiences.

Book: Longbourn

Title: Longbourn
Author: Jo Baker
Published: 2013
Category: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Retelling, Classic Retelling
Pages: 332
Summary on Goodreads: In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended. 

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own. 

Series:The Wide Awake Princess

Series: Wide-Awake Princess
Author: E. D. Baker
Category: Childrens/Middle-Grade
Started: 2010
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy-Tale Retellings/mash-ups, princesses
Summary of First Book: Princess Annie is the younger sister to Gwen, the princess destined to be Sleeping Beauty. When Gwennie pricks her finger and the whole castle falls asleep, only Annie is awake, and only Annie—blessed (or cursed?) with being impervious to magic—can venture out beyond the rose-covered hedge for help. She must find Gwen's true love to kiss her awake.

But who is her true love? The irritating Digby? The happy-go-lucky Prince Andreas, who is holding a contest to find his bride? The conniving Clarence, whose sinister motives couldn't possibly spell true love? Joined by one of her father's guards, Liam, who happened to be out of the castle when the sleeping spell struck, Annie travels through a fairy tale land populated with characters both familiar and new as she tries to fix her sister and her family . . . and perhaps even find a true love of her own.

Note: Also check out the author's Tale of the Frog Princess series which was the inspiration for Disney's The Princess and the Frog

Book: National Velvet

Title: National Velvet
Author: Enid Bagnold
Published: 1935
Category: Classic, Childrens/Middle-Grade
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Horses
Pages: 272
Summary on Goodreads: The timeless story of spirited Velvet Brown and her beloved horse has thrilled generations of readers. And now the republication of this classic story in a fresh, up-to-date package will charm confirmed fans while captivating new ones. Fourteen-year-old Velvet is determined to turn her untamed horse into a champion and personally ride him to victory in the world's greatest steeplechase, the Grand National.

Book: The Wind-Up Girl

Title: The Windup Girl
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Published: 2009
Category: Adult
Genre: Dystopian
Pages: 480
Summary on Goodreads: Anderson Lake is AgriGen’s Calorie Man, sent to work undercover as a factory manager in Thailand while combing Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories.

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in this chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits and forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly-acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century.