The Murrys

• A Wrinkle in Time
• Wind in the Door
• Many Waters
• A Swiftly Tilting Planet

• Meet the Austins
• The Moon by Night
• A Ring of Endless Light
• Troubling a Star

• The Arm of the Starfish
• Dragons in the Waters
• A House like a Lotus
• An Acceptable Time

• The Young Unicorns
• A Severed Wasp

Madeleine L'Engle

Possibly some of the most heart-wrenching and thought-provoking stories I've read, ever, Madeleine L'Engle's stories are hard to categorize, and even harder to put an appropriate age to. Most of the situations the children are involved in would give even the most hard-bitten adult pause, and the science and religion so inextricably woven into the fiction are like carrots for the brain - you've got to chew it for a while, but it's sweet and tender when you're finished. Even with all that aside, the characters themselves really sell the stories. Followed over the course of generations, the quite extra-ordinary Murrys and neighborly Austins are at once both sympathetic and wondrous. L'Engle details their histories with the loving tenderness of a griot offering the ancestral history to the next generation. In a world where fantastic adventures are common, every detail is depicted so vividly as to seem real.