This is the novel on which Bertolucci's controversial 2003 film THE DREAMERS was based. Yes, the one with Eva Green. Yes, the one where everyone was naked half the time.

I'm told that Appelfeld is quite well-respected over in Israel. You wouldn’t know it from this book. Mind you, I was hardly expecting a repeat of One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez remarked that the English translation was superior even to the Spanish original) but it’s hard to believe that a work of this indifferent caliber can have been written by someone of Appelfeld's eminence.

Here it is, the feminist take on the Matter of Britain. But Bradley is not really (or at least not primarily) writing revisionist history in the vein of Josephine Tey with Richard III in THE DAUGHTER OF TIME. She's spinning a yarn, and a damn good one at that.

Although "Bloodchild" is the standout (garnering both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novelette) in this collection from Butler - one of the only authors in the field of science fiction to wrestle with the thorny problems of race and gender - its inclusion in this list obviously owes to another story, "Near of Kin," more understated and less groundbreaking, but beautiful all the same.

Deservedly hailed as a jewel of Carter's early fiction, this slim volume – hardly more than a novella – chronicles the adventures of the orphaned Melanie, packed off to live with her uncle and his eccentric relatives in a dilapidated toyshop where everything is not as it seems. This book immediately endeared itself to me as it begins with a Donne quote: “Oh my America/my new found land!”

One of my all-time favorites. Take two orphaned siblings in a ramshackle turn-of-the-century country manor; add a no-nonsense Irish maid, a rich middle-aged gentleman neighbor, frequent visits to their father in an insane asylum and the impending menace of WWI, and what do you get? Great Gothic romance.

It may be stretching the definition of "contemporary" just a little. But John Ford remains one of the foremost Jacobean dramatists, and this play, despite or perhaps because of its controversial subject matter, is proof positive of why.

Not satisfied with one incestuous union in "Wideacre," Philippa Gregory returns with another one in the sequel here.

The children of the Willow family are dominated by a sadistic patriarch/father who keeps them willfully cut off from the rest of the world. So when a stranger comes calling, he sets off a series of events whose consequences no one is able to foresee.

This is one of Hoffman's earlier efforts, in which she ventures forth from the nameless New England town in which she is wont to set her stories, and into the arid mesas of southern California and New Mexico. I was gratified to discover that the resulting novel was just as atmospheric as any of Hoffman's better-known works, such as HERE ON EARTH or PRACTICAL MAGIC.

Has this book achieved the status of "cult classic" yet? It should. It's written in the vein of those episodic adventure stories - I don't want to say picaresque because that would imply a lighter tone than that which is in fact evidenced by the text, which is replete with all manner of creative mutilations, amputations and castrations.

The quintessential work of high fantasy: A kingdom in peril. An exiled prince. A sorcerous tyrant. A revolution is brewing ...

"The Blood of the Walsungs" is palpably influenced by Wagner's Ring saga - the twin protagonists are named Siegmund and Sieglinde for Chrissakes - and the anti-Semitic bent of the whole thing is easily discernible. It's disturbing but ultimately intellectually satisfying.

The first in the ongoing “A Song of Ice and Fire” saga. The Wars of the Roses played out on a South-America-sized continent, against the backdrop of ominous portents from north, where the equivalent of Hadrian's Wall has held back the icy supernatural menace of the undead for thousands of years - but how much longer will the Wall hold?

One of his lesser-known works. Above all, a story of redemption.

By the man who gave us The Godfather and adapted it for the screen. The kinship with that book is evident. Puzo projects the same Machiavellian machinations onto the family of Rodrigo Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI), his soon-to-be-infamous daughter Lucrezia, and his sons Cesare and Gioffre.

As a writer, Henry Roth experienced something of a resurrection with the publication of this series of semi-autobiographical novels, beginning with Vol. 1: A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park. and continuing with Vol. 3: From Bondage and Vol. 4: Requiem for Harlem.

The incest is only implied, and in any case entirely tangential to the plot, but it's a good enough excuse to include this gem of a book here. Tight storytelling, genuinely surprising plot twist.

An interesting observation is that the protagonists are named Christopher and Cathy - just like V.C. Andrews' much more well-known incestuous couple.

Inspired by the tale of Kullervo from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.