@Alice Wonderland,
												There are so many to choose from as far as a favorite.  I go through phases with many authors and devour everything I can locate from them. 
Through the years there was the Ed McBain phase, the Samuel Butler time,  a brief visit with John Lescroart,  an on and off trip to Ernest Hemingway and am now in the midst of a Joseph Roth vacation.
I'll possibly take a journey to science fiction soon, it's been too long a while since I've been there.
Favorite books would include Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn's 
One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich,  Carson McCullers's 
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.