Authors I Wish Were Still Writing Today 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature/meme now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The meme was originally the brainchild of The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is Authors I Wish Were Still Writing Today.

Authors I Wish Were Still Writing Today

I have been an avid reader for 56 years. In that time, I have seen a lot of my favorite authors die, and others stop writing for reasons known (ill health, usually) and unknown. Since some of my favorite children’s authors were already gone by the time I discovered there books, by now a good percentage of the authors I love are gone. (In my mind, I picture them continuing to write in the afterlife, so that I’ll have the pleasure of new books by favorite authors whenever I, too, depart this plane.)

Here, in alphabetical order, are some of the authors I wish were still writing—or still around to write. There are others, to be sure; I’ve listed a few more at the bottom.

Ngaio Marsh: Marsh is one of my favorite Golden Age mystery writers. Her series starring Scotland Yard detective Roderick Alleyn is brilliant, and unlike Dorothy Sayers (who abandoned Lord Peter around 1936), Marsh successfully brought Alleyn through the Second World War and all the way into 1982, with no evidence of any decline in either her own or her hero’s abilities. Indeed, her last Alleyn mystery, Light Thickens, is one of my favorites in the whole series. (A posthumous novel finished by Stella Duffy is, to my mind, not really successful in capturing the essence of a Ngaio Marsh mystery.)

Anne McCaffrey: I have loved McCaffrey’s books since high school, especially the Pern novels and the books set in the Talent universe. I cried when she died. Although she allowed her children, Todd and Georgeanne (Gigi), to continue writing Pern novels (both before and after her death, in Todd’s case), I was disappointed in Todd’s contributions, because I felt they didn’t adhere closely enough to the canon and worldbuilding. (I haven’t read Gigi’s single Pern novel yet.) I wish Anne was still alive and writing. [REVIEW: Restoree]

Robin McKinley: McKinley hasn’t published (or as far as I know, even finished) a novel since Shadows in 2013. She rarely posts on her blog; the last post was in March 2025. That post did mention a nameless story in progress, and confirmed that she does plan to finish the Pegasus series someday (book #1 came out in the 2000s, and I have stubbornly refused to read it until the series is complete.) She also said “it’s been a bad decade and a half,” which is fair; she has ME/CFS, she lost her husband (novelist Peter Dickinson) after a long decline, and she moved from England to Scotland. I’ll take heart from the hint that she is actively writing again as of last year, but I’m not holding my breath. If we ever get a new McKinley novel, I will be over the moon with delight; if we don’t, I will continue to treasure the ones we have. [REVIEW: Shadows]

Tamora Pierce: Pierce hasn’t released a book since 2018’s Tempests and Slaughter, the first of a planned trilogy set in her Tortall universe. I know her health hasn’t been great in recent years, and I fear we may never have the joy of a new Tamora Pierce novel again. At the very least, I had hoped to see the completion of the Numair trilogy. [REVIEW: The Protector of the Strong quartet]

Elizabeth Marie Pope wrote only two novels as far as I am aware, both of them YA, both with a romantic happy ending; the books are otherwise quite different from each other. The Sherwood Ring is both a contemporary (1950s or early 1960s) romance and a historical novel told to the first-person narrator by the ghosts of some of her ancestors. It’s funny and moving and absolutely delightful. The Perilous Gard is set during the reign of Mary Tudor. It’s a loose retelling of “Tam Lin,” and whether it is historical fiction or historical fantasy is left to the reader to decide: do you think the folk living in a cave system under the hill are actually Fairy Folk, or merely the remnants of a pagan druidic people? (Personally, I go with the “historical fantasy” interpretation, as do most readers I know.) It’s an evocative, gripping story with an intelligent, stubborn, willful, deeply relatable and utterly unforgettable heroine. I love both books, and I’m so disappointed that Pope didn’t write any others. [REVIEW: The Sherwood Ring]

Patrick Rothfuss: Rothfuss says he is still working on book 3 of the Kingkiller Chronicles. I’ve been waiting for nearly 15 years, and I’ll believe it when I see it. Look, I do understand writer’s block, etc., especially when one has built up huge expectations in the first two books, and one is clearly a perfectionist (and brilliant) when it comes to writing. But neither Pat nor I is getting any younger, and I dearly hope I get to read the conclusion of the trilogy before one of us dies. [REVIEW: The Name of the Wind]

Dorothy Sayers: Sayers is my favorite Golden Age “Queen of Crime,” narrowly edging out Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Josephine Tey. Her mysteries are erudite and meticulously crafted; her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, is sharply brilliant under his fatuous “silly ass” mask. He banters, quips, and tosses off quotations with charm and aplomb, but underneath, he is both compassionate and sensitive—particularly as the series progresses. Peter grows emotionally throughout the arc of the series, making him unusual among Golden Age detective heroes. The four books covering his romance with author Harriet Vane (who has more than a little in common with Sayers herself) are among my favorites, particularly the Oxford-set Gaudy Night, arguably Sayers’ best novel. I would dearly love to have had more Lord Peter mysteries by Sayers herself. Fortunately, although she abandoned the novel Thrones, Dominations sometime between 1936 and 1938, she left behind a number of handwritten and typewritten scenes along with several diagrams. Nearly forty years after Sayers’ death in 1957, author Jill Paton Walsh was asked to recreate and finish the novel. Walsh went on to pen 3 more Lord Peter mysteries, all of them quite good and very faithful to the Sayers canon. Nevertheless, I wish Sayers herself had continued writing about Peter and Harriet’s adventures in detecting, and given us far more than Ms. Walsh’s four novels. [REVIEWS: Whose Body?; Striding Folly]

Mary Stewart: I absolutely loved Stewart’s romantic-suspense novels of the 1950s–70s, and would love to see what she might write today, if she were still alive and at the height of her storytelling powers. (I am not as fond of the three romantic-suspense novels she wrote from 1988 through 1997, though it has been so long since I read them that I can’t remember why.) Stewart’s Arthurian Saga is terrific historical fantasy, and I wish she had written more in that genre, too. [REVIEWS: Airs Above the Ground; The Gabriel Hounds; Nine Coaches Waiting; This Rough Magic]

And a few more, sans descriptions:

• Agatha Christie
• Dick Francis (sorry, but his son Felix just isn’t quite the same)
• Zenna Henderson
• Katherine Kurtz
• Madeleine L’Engle (particularly books like or related to the Wrinkle in Time series)
• L. M. Montgomery
• William Shakespeare (because I would love to see what he would do with language as it’s spoken today. I suspect he would be a hip-hop artist, at least on the side.)
• Josephine Tey
• and although I haven’t read most of his books yet, Terry Pratchett

Related Posts

• Related Posts

News & Notes – 12/14/2024

News & Notes – 6/13/2020

My Most Anticipated New Releases: July &

News & Notes – 8/20/16

Ten Series I’ve Been Meaning To St