Please join us in welcoming Martha Southgate to Top Ten Land. Martha is an award-winning author whose work often explores the tension and contradictions experienced by African Americans who live amongst whites.

Claire Messud established her name, as well as a large and captivated following, in 2006 with her critically acclaimed bestseller, The Emperor’s Children.

If she were a pop star, she would churn some more product out quick, fast, in-a-hurry. Instead she lived her life, started one novel, then abandoned it. Now, seven years later, Knopf has published The Woman Upstairs.

If James Salter has received glowing reviews throughout his brilliant career, then his notice in Friday’s New York Times can only be called a white-hot Supernova of praise. Here’s how Malcolm Jones begins his review of Salter’s new novel:

Our newest list comes from Jane Mendelsohn, who soared into prominence in 1996 with her bestselling debut, I Was Amelia Earhart.

Michiko Kakutani praised that work, which was short-listed for the Orange Prize, for using “the bare-boned outlines of the aviator's life … for a poetic meditation on freedom and love and flight.” The New York Times critic also compared it to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "General in His Labyrinth" for the way it “invokes the spirit of a mythic personage, while standing on its own as a powerfully imagined work of fiction.”