Tasha Alexander attended the University of Notre Dame, where she signed on as an English major in order to have a legitimate excuse for spending all her time reading. She lived in Amsterdam, London, Wyoming, Vermont, Connecticut and Tennessee before settling in Chicago. Her work has been translated into 11 languages, and her latest novel, Tears of Pearl, published by Minotaur September 4, continues the adventures of her heroine, Lady Emily Ashton.

On your nightstand now:

I've got two dueling for next to be read: Jess Winfield's My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare and David Nicholls's One Day.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I was completely enchanted by Laura Ingalls Wilder from age three to about ten and spent uncountable hours under the dining room table pretending it was a covered wagon.

Your top five authors:

Jane Austen, David Mitchell, Jeanette Winterson, Elizabeth Peters, Haruki Murakami.

Book you've faked reading:

Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. It's not so much that I faked it, but I kept trying and trying and trying but in the end had to admit defeat.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. You. Must. Read. Now.

Book you've bought for the cover:

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig. I can still remember picking it up because of the gorgeous cover. Then I read it and couldn't get my hands on the subsequent volumes in the series fast enough!

Book that changed your life:

Every book leaves a mark on you. But the ones (yes, I'm incapable of picking just one) that brought about the most obvious change in my life are the Amelia Peabody novels by Elizabeth Peters. I'd fallen madly in love with them and was tearing through them one after another. When I ran out and realized I'd have to wait an entire year for the next installment to be published, I was dismayed and wondered if I should try writing something of my own to help the time pass more quickly. Soon thereafter (with another push from Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night), I started to work on And Only to Deceive.

Favorite line from a book:

"If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, 'When you're ready.'"--David Mitchell in Black Swan Green.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Pride and Prejudice.