Scott Turow's Top Ten List

Author Photo And Bio
Photo of Scott Turow (Jeremy Lawson)

Scott Turow (born 1949) is an American novelist, practicing attorney and literary activist. He debuted with the acclaimed memoir, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School (1977). A decade later he published his first novel, the blockbuster Presumed Innocence (1987). He followed with a string of bestselling legal thrillers including The Burden of Proof (1990), Pleading Guilty (1993), Personal Injuries (1999, Time Magazine Fiction Book of the Year), Reversible Errors (2002, Heartland Prize), Innocent (2010), Identical (2013), The Last Trial (2020) and Suspect (2022). His other books include a nonfiction reflection on the death penalty, Ultimate Punishment (2003, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award). He has been active in a number of charitable causes including organizations that promote literacy, education and legal rights. He is a past president of the Authors Guild. To learn more, visit Scott’s official website.

With Scott's brief comments.

1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916), which first showed me that fiction could articulate what I took as wild and private dreams.

 

 

 

2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877), because of the powerful and intimate rendition of these webbed lives.

 

 

 

3. Rabbit Angstrom—Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), Rabbit at Rest (1990) by John Updike, because of their acute observation and moral courage.

 

 

 

4. Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964), for its extraordinary language, intellectual power and its observations of Chicago.

 

 

 

5. Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen (1961), for its inventiveness and power.

 

 

 

6. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844), for its spectacular plot.

 

 

 

7. Works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616), for their miraculous language and extraordinary observations about humanity.

 

 

 

8. The Bear by William Faulkner (1942), for telling the quintessential American story from inside the American mind.

 

 

 

9. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934), an extremely contemporary book that anticipated much of our current preoccupation with gender.

 

 

 

10. The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (1932), for its elegance and perfect mystery.