Eight coming-of-age thrillers

Debbie Babitt left her career as the Copy Chief for a major publishing company to focus on writing fiction. A former actress, playwright, and drama critic, she now divides her time between Manhattan and Florida. Saving Grace is her debut novel.

At CrimeReads Babitt tagged eight favorite coming-of-age thrillers, including:

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the grown up Jean Louise “Scout” Finch looks back on her life as a young girl living in Alabama in the 1930s. Scout is almost six when the novel opens, and nearly nine by the end. The action doesn’t alternate between Scout’s childhood and adulthood; and she reveals little about the woman she has become. That isn’t the point of her story. She’s trying to put the seminal events that shaped her as a child into perspective. Viewing these events from the distance of years enables her to see the past more objectively. By examining the elusive concepts of justice and equality through the prism of experience and

knowledge, she hopes to better understand the far-reaching impact of a rape, a trial, and a murder in a rabidly racist southern town three decades before the civil rights movement.

Read about the other entries on the list.

To Kill a Mockingbird made Allison Pataki's top ten list of father figures in literature, Bonnie Kistler's list of four classic fictional trials that subverted the truth, Kathy Bates's ten desert island books list, Lavie Tidhar's list of five fantastical heroines in great children’s books, Sarah Ward's ten top list of brothers and sisters in fiction, Katy Guest's list of six top books for shy readers, Jeff Somers's top ten list of fictional characters based on actual people, Carol Wall's list of five books that changed her, John Bardinelli's list of five authors who became famous after publishing a single novel and never published another one, Ellie Irving's top ten list of quiet heroes and heroines, a list of five books that changed Richelle Mead, Robert Williams's top ten list of loners in fiction, Alyssa Bereznak's top ten list of literary heroes with weird names, Louise Doughty's top ten list of courtroom dramas, Hanna McGrath's top fifteen list of epic epigraphs, the Telegraph's list of ten great meals in literature, Nicole Hill's list of fourteen characters their creators should have spared, Isla Blair's six best books list, Lauren Passell's list of ten pairs of books made better when read together, Charlie Fletcher's top ten list of adventure classics, Sheila Bair's 6 favorite books list, Kathryn Erskine's top ten list of first person narratives, Julia Donaldson's six best books list, TIME magazine's top 10 list of books you were forced to read in school, John Mullan's list of ten of the best lawyers in literature, John Cusack's list of books that made a difference to him, Lisa Scottoline's top ten list of books about justice, and Luke Leitch's list of ten literary one-hit wonders. It is one of Sanjeev Bhaskar's six best books and one of Alexandra Styron's five best stories of fathers and daughters.

--Marshal Zeringue