Julia Franks is the author of The Say So (forthcoming in June with Hub City Press) and Over the Plain Houses (Hub City Press), an NPR Best Book of 2016 that also won five prestigious literary prizes (the Townsend Prize for Georgia fiction, the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award, the SIBA Southern Book Prize, Georgia Author of the Year, and the IPPY Gold Medal). She's also published stories and essays in The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, The Bitter Southerner, and other places. She lives in Atlanta. Julia writes, "The most common question folks ask me is what my favorite books are. Immediately upon hearing this question, my mind goes blank. Always. So that's where Goodreads comes in. Listed here are my very favorite books: ones that have deeply affected me in some way, changed my life, or inspired me to try new things in my own writing. The novels I tend to love the most are those that reach toward the archetypal. Many contain elements of myth and magic. All of them have become part of my permanent mental landscape."