Top 10 books about incarceration

Lesley Glaister’s first novel, Honour Thy Father, won both a Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award. Her other novels include Trick or Treat, Limestone and Clay, for which she was awarded the Yorkshire Post Book Award, Partial Eclipse and The Private Parts of Women, Now You See Me, As Far as You Can Go, and Nina Todd Has Gone. Her latest novel is Chosen.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten books on incarceration. One book on the list:

Misery by Stephen King

There's a less appealing version of the enforced writer's retreat in this terrifying novel – terrifying particularly, perhaps, for a writer. In a remote part of Maine, a popular novelist crashes his car and his life is saved by a mad fan. She's mortified to discover that he's killed off Misery, her favourite character, and keeps him prisoner, insisting that he write a novel resurrecting Misery. She's the most fanatically particular and violent editor/jailer one can imagine. It's an intense book, with just these two central characters locked in a close and claustrophobic tangle of mind-games, combat and downright gruesome nastiness.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue