Top Ten Tuesday (31) - Authors Who Deserve More Recognition

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  This week's topic - top ten authors who deserve more recognition.  I really love this topic because it means I get to shine a spotlight on some of my favorite authors.

Top Ten Authors Who Deserve More/Better Recognition

• Frank Beddor
• I love retellings, and Beddor's adaptations of Alice in Wonderland are some of the best.  He wrote both The Looking Glass Wars trilogy and the Hatter M graphic novel series.  If you like Splintered by A.G. Howard, I think you'd really like Beddor's books as well.
• Louisa May Alcott
• Yes, Alcott is already widely known for Little Women, but most people don't know about any of her other books.  She wrote so many good books, and I've loved all of them.  My favorites (besides Little Women and its sequels) are A Long Fatal Love Chase, The Inheritance, Eight Cousins, and Rose in Bloom.
• Jerry Spinelli
• I love, love, love his book Stargirl.  It was the very first book we read for my high school book club, and I thought his book was so sweet and perfect.
• Patricia C. Wrede
• I grew up reading Wrede's fantasy novels, and she's probably the reason that I love the fantasy genre so much.  Her Enchanted Forest Chronicles are funny and exciting, and her other books are fun reads too.  I especially love Mairelon the Magician and The Magician's Ward.
• Lloyd Alexander
• I read Alexander's Prydain Chronicles shortly after reading Wrede's series.  While Wrede's books are much more lighthearted, Alexander's books are much darker and more serious.  His books would probably be considered closer to epic fantasy.  He also wrote the Westmark trilogy, which is a great series with a military/political edge.

• Stephenie Meyer
• Ok, ok.  Cue the eye-rolling.  I'm not trying to say that Meyer doesn't get enough recognition.  She gets plenty.  I'm just saying that a lot of it isn't the good kind of recognition, thanks to the Twilight movies and final books.  But I think she deserves better for The Host.  I loved that book (and the movie too), and thought it far surpassed her other series.
• Kaitlin Bevis
• I'm absolutely in love with Hades/Persephone stories, and Bevis' series is one of my favorites.  She definitely deserves some praise for The Daughters of Zeus trilogy.  It's exciting and romantic with killer cliffhangers.
• Stephen R. Lawhead
• Lawhead has written so many books, and I feel like so few people read them.  He's written both science fiction and fantasy, but he's mostly known for the fantasy.  Some of the series I own are The Pendragon Cycle (a retelling of King Arthur), the Dragon King trilogy (epic fantasy), and the King Raven series (a retelling of Robin Hood).
• Anne Bronte
• I feel like poor Anne Bronte is always being overshadowed by her sisters.  Everyone's heard of Charlotte's book Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights, but no one ever talks about Anne.  I admit that I'm guilty of not reading her books either (although they are on my TBR list).  I've only seen the BBC adaptation of her novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but I think that's because so many more people know her sisters' novels better.
• Donita K. Paul
• Besides being the author of the DragonKeeper Chronicles (a great fanstasy series with dragons), Paul is also just a very fun person in real life.  Even if I hadn't read and loved her series, I would have thought she was so cool from her bio on goodreads.com.  It says, "I am an author of Christian Fantasy. My first 7 books were Christian Romance, but I came over to the Dark Side when I heard there were cookies".

What about you?  Any here that you agree or disagree with?  Any authors you'd like to add?