Ten top tales about the rich

Sarah Blake is the author of Full Turn, a chapbook of poems, Runaway Girls, an artist book in collaboration with the artist, Robin Kahn, and three novels: Grange House; and the New York Times bestsellers, The Postmistress, and The Guest Book. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, the poet Joshua Weiner, and their two sons.

At the Guardian, Blake tagged ten "big, juicy stories of love, betrayal and memory; rich in the stuff and sorrow of dreams." One title on the list:

Run River by Joan Didion

Didion’s first novel begins with the sound of a gunshot heard by a woman calmly fastening a watch to her wrist in her bedroom, and takes us back through the events leading up to that shot – back through her memory, and further back into the history of her family, among the first settlers of the state of California. The novel combines Didion’s characteristically minute observation of class and power with a plot that spins relentlessly forward, never letting you forget that it must return to the moment of that opening shot.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue