When I was a child, I never thought much about who wrote the books I loved. I read for the characters, the story, the settings so different from my suburban life. Because most of my books came from library shelves, I considered the librarians as the keepers of the hallowed books. If I’d cared to think about it, I might have assumed those librarians performed magic during the hours between dark and dawn when the library was closed and dark—a special kind of magic that filled the shelves with books of different shapes, colors, sizes, and smells. After all, those books took me, magically, to faraway lands and worlds I’d never dreamed of.

I learned early that, magic or no, I might accidentally take home a book I didn’t like. While I used to be, and still am, a forgiving reader, I prefer books where the characters act like real people. Give me characters that are sensible (if misdirected) and flawed (rather than impossibly good) and I’m happy; give me the opposite, and I’m likely to roll my eyes. Fortunately, eye-rollers were rare. I didn’t mind the occasional dud when I so often found myself in the world of the likes of Anne from Anne of Green Gables and Meg from A Wrinkle in Time.

Eventually I realized the magic of books was connected directly to the author listed on the spine; to my further delight, books next to each other with the same author often meant series. A series  …