Booking Through Thursday (12)

What book or author are you most thankful to have discovered?
Have you read everything they’ve written? Reread them?
Why do you appreciate them so much?

I don't know if I can pick just one. There are so many books and authors out there that have changed who I am or changed my reading tastes. Narrowing the list down, I think I'm most grateful to what I call my gateway authors:

L.J. Smith - I read the Night World books as a teen (and many times since then) and she is the author who inspired me to read so much as well as to read books with a paranormal angle. I own most of her books although I have yet to read the Dark Visions and Forbidden Game trilogies.

Maria V. Snyder - Poison Study was my gateway book into fantasy which I've recently discovered a passion for. If I hadn't been looking around the library to fill the akward letters on an A-Z character challenge (yay for Yelena and Valek) I'd never have read her book and I'd have missed out on some awesome reads.

Kelley Armstrong - Bitten was the first urban fantasy that I loved unconditionally. I'd mostly been reading young adult books, and Kelley Armstrong gatewayed me into adult. Ironically a few years later, she gatewayed me back into young adult with her Darkest Powers books.

And there's also my all-time favourite book: The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. I had this out of the library all the time as a child, and then one day had to return it. I forgot what it was called and spent years looking for a book called Moonacre (or something similar) and only rediscovered this when my grandparents rented the movie. I'm so thankful to have found it again :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!