Top Ten Tuesday #80 + Teaser Tuesday #41

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish 

Top Ten Favorite Authors of ALL TIME! I have to choose ten out of ALL the authors I've ever read?! Really?! This isn't fair!!!!!!! :-( But I can do it! And to make it easier on myself, I will only include YA and Middle Grade authors; no classics.

1. John Flanagan. I'll be honest, I have read authors whose writing is so, so, so much better and the Ranger's Apprentice series dragged, and he seems very adverse to ever killing any of his characters. But I grew up with John Flanagan's books. The Ruins of Gorlan opened me up to fantasy. I will always, always love his books.
2. Lemony Snicket. I will always read anything and everything written by him. Short of The Roman Mysteries, his books were my first "real" fandom. I obsessed over these books. I had notebooks filled with notes and I studied codes and ciphers just to crack the ones in the books. I read all the classic books referenced, I watched and rewatched the movie; I spent a lot of time scouring websites and forums and other fans' theories. Lemony Snicket is one of my absolute favorites.
3. Ann Rinaldi. Her historical fiction novels were my first introduction into the YA genre. I haven't read all of her books, but I'm close and I will always buy an Ann Rinaldi book if I see it.
4. Cat Winters. A much more recent author; she's releasing her third book in a few months. I have loved ALL of her books and I know I can always count on her to write an amazing Gothic historical fiction supernatural story, with awesome protagonists and genuinely swoon-worthy guys who are also gentlemen.
5. Anthony Horowitz. I loved his Alex Rider series, and I'm enjoying his Gatekeepers horror series, too. But he truly impressed me most with his Sherlock Holmes novels - especially that last one: Moriarty. Still not over that one.
6. William Ritter. Impressed me with the very first page of Jackaby. I will always, always, always read what he writes.
7. Victoria (V.E.) Schwab. Someone else whose books I will always read. She caught me with The Near Witch and just kept reeling me in with The Archived and then Vicious. She made me love present tense.
8. Leigh Bardugo. You ripped my heart out with the final Grisha book! You introduced me to one of my most favorite villains and dark heroes - Nikolai!
9. Brandon Sanderson. Do I need to explain this?
10. Maggie Stiefvater. While I'm not a fan of her earliest books - Lament and all those (I still have to read Shiver, so I will withhold my judgement on that series) - her other stuff I have loved. The Scorpio Races is one of my all-time favorite books, and The Raven Cycle is just. . . .yeah.

Do I really have to stop at ten? What about Morgan Rhodes, Danielle Paige, Cornelia Funke, James Dashner, Avi, Michael Buckley, Sharon Cameron . . . . . This isn't fair. . . . .

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Should Be Reading

In an instant he was gone. Verlaine wondered if he had stopped time - and if he had remained there a long time, watching her, before he left. She wanted him to have done that, even though she knew it was a stupid thing to want. Sorceress by Claudia Gray (pg. 177)