STACKED: What’s on Karen Thompson Walker's Shelf

This was a big inspiration for The Strange Case of Jane O. It's a collection of super uncanny case histories of real people living with strange brain disorders. This book truly blew my mind the first time I read it.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez is just a classic masterpiece.

The Buddha in the Attic is overflowing with gorgeous and heartbreaking sentences that manage to tell the story of an entire generation of Japanese-American women, even though it's very short.

I remember I bought it in a used bookstore in New York when I was in graduate school, probably 20 years ago. I just remember when I read it, I had a kind of lightbulb moment about what kind of novel I might be able to write, and that eventually led me to write my first novel, The Age of Miracles.

And probably my favorite book of all time, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro—it's just a perfect novel.