My list are:

The first: Old Yeller (can’t remember the author)

I read this when I was about 10 or 11. I had only ever read gentle children’s adventures and Old Yeller is the story of an old dog that has caught rabies. I remember being shocked by the story, by the descriptions of what happened. It was the first book that felt realistic and not safe. I’m glad I read it as it opened my mind to the world.

The second : The Plague Dogs, by Richard Adams.

Set in a laboratory where dogs and other animals are experimented on, two dogs join forces and escape. Lost on the Cumbria fells they eventually meet “the Tod” a fox, a wily character. All three animals are being hunted by the lab and the police who have dubbed them “the plague dogs” because of scaremongering by the press. Will they escape ?

(Richard Adams also wrote Watership Down.)

The book influenced my style of writing, there is a section in one chapter on how to write a newspaper article. The book also gave me an idea of how animals can suffer at the behest of mankind.

The third book is: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood.

I read it in the 1980s before it was very famous. I’ve seen the TV series which is far more in depth than the original book. As a young woman I was shocked by the mysogeny of the world the women in it lived in. I saw it as a warning and never believed that anything like it could happen in the real world? And yet so many things have happened that seem to want to drag women back to the home and dispel the rights they have fought long and hard for.

I would recommend all of these books if you want to open your eyes to different ideas.