A million books will be given away for World Book Night tonight, so we asked authors to name the one book they would like to see everybody in the world read

John Connolly

The Three Musketeersby Alexandre Dumas

I have a deep and abiding affection for this book, which I feel is possibly the greatest adventure novel ever written. It features whenever I'm asked to give a list of my five favourite novels, along with Bleak House, The Good Soldier, Wuthering Heightsand, cheating slightly, the Jeeves-and-Wooster stories of PG Wodehouse, without which no desert-island exile would be tolerable. The Three Musketeershas everything: love, intrigue, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, exquisite villainy in the form of Milady de Winter and Cardinal Richelieu, and lots of chaps waving swords threateningly. It's also immensely readable. There may be a perception that classic literature means worthy, difficult novels, but the opposite is frequently true: these stories have survived precisely because they are so accessible and because generation after generation can identify with their themes and their characters. They may sometimes require us to read in a slightly different way, but what reader doesn't want to be challenged occasionally? After reading Bleak House,which is the greatest novel in the English language, I think, all other books seemed thin and unambitious by comparison. But my heart has been lighter ever since reading The Three Musketeersas a student. I can't think back on it without smiling, and without wanting to read it again.

* John Connolly's next book, Hell's Bells, is out in May

Jon Ronson

What A Carve Up!by Jonathan Coe.

It's a big, labyrinthine, comic novel about the Thatcher years. It knocked me sideways when I first read it, in my 20s; it taught me much about how to write and also how the world works. It's a novel about a ruling-class family, each member responsible for one of society's ills, from intensive farming to the carve up of the National Health Service to the right-wing press. One member of the family promotes contemporary art, which was considered similarly wicked by Coe, in a rare misstep. The power of the book is simple: he traces a path from these big, repulsive ideas made on high, from greed or ideology down to how they affect our regular lives. The grand craziness and the everyday: that's something I try to show in my nonfiction books, every one of which starts out as a real life What A Carve Up!, although they never end up that way.

*Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Testis published in June

John Banville

A dictionary

Without doubt the book that governments should distribute free to every citizen of the land at birth is the dictionary. The word hoard is our birthright and our most precious treasure. Language is what defines us as a species, and humankind's greatest invention is the sentence. There have been civilisations that managed without the wheel, but they had to have the sentence. And sentences, as we know, are merely strings of words assembled in more or less the right, or at least readable, order. Which dictionary? The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionaryis a noble edifice but not exactly handy. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, in two stout volumes, is an altogether more versatile tool. It should be kept in mind, though, that the OEDand the SOEDare based on historical principles, which means they are more concerned with the history of usage than with preciseness of definition. Chambers 20th Century Dictionary– why no hyphen? – Scotland's finest, on the other hand, is content to be ad hoc, and can be capricious, if not downright flighty. It gives "uninterested" as one of the definitions of "disinterested", which is a shameless piece of populism. Yet it has its moments of poetry, too. Look up "doldrums", for instance, or consider the wonderfully politically incorrect "bevy": "a company or flock of larks, quails, swans, roes, or ladies". Hours of fun and instruction, the world's best book, and every home should have one.

* John Banville's most recent novel is The Infinities

Val McDermid

Treasure Islandby Robert Louis Stevenson

For me this book has it all. Right from the start we’re plunged into mysterious and exotic action, all seen through the eyes of a young lad who’s as wide-eyed and up for adventure as anyone could hope for. The book is populated with characters who have become archetypes – who doesn’t know Long John Silver? – and they lead us through a tremendous swashbuckling tale that incorporates all the elements of great storytelling: secrets, betrayals, a great journey, unpredictability, pirate gold and a desert island. To top it off there’s Stevenson’s wonderfully clear and atmospheric prose. What’s not to love? I’m off to the Admiral Benbow right now for a glass of ale.

* Val McDermid's latest novel is Trick of the Dark

Mark Haddon

Wolf Hallby Hilary Mantel

When it comes to gifts you need laser-guided precision. Consequently, I rarely give the same book twice. But Lorrie Moore, Bill Bryson, Alan Bennett, Don Paterson, Audrey Niffenegger, Per Petterson, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker and Yotam Ottolenghi (he of the fine cookbook) have all done me good service in this regard. In an ideal world where everyone shares my impeccable taste I would probably give everyone copies of Wolf Hall,by Hilary Mantel, because it is the most recent bona-fide contemporary masterpiece I have read. I never did history at school, and I've been trying to catch up ever since, so books like this are gold dust. Her versions of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey don't seem to me like versions at all, but the real people from whom all other versions will now deviate. I can still hear them. I can still smell them. And that is partly because of her incredible control over the language. On almost every page there was a passage that rang like a bell. I kept stopping and thinking, How did she do that?

* Mark Haddon is the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Eoin Colfer

The Guardsby Ken Bruen

I am a big fan of genre fiction. I suppose the books I like best are the ones that surprise me, which is a little ironic for someone who reads genre stuff. I like books where you think you know exactly what you are getting and suddenly find yourself thrown for a loop as the author injects some reanimating concoction into the formula's corpse. Lately I have been reading a lot of crime, and more specifically Irish crime. We have several writers making their mark internationally for the very reason that they have brought something fresh to the genre. Declan Burke, Colin Bateman and John Connolly are a few of the breakthrough stars, but for me the man that stands out is the Galway noir-king, Ken Bruen. If you are a crime aficionado and you have not read Bruen's Jack Taylor series, then you are seriously missing out. I remember picking up The Guards, which is the first book in the series, at Dublin airport, and subsequently staying awake all the way across the Atlantic just to finish it. I was expecting standard private-investigator fare, laced with laconic humour, which would have been fine, but what I got was sheer dark poetry. It was a tale of addiction, loss and Ireland, without the leprechauns. This book was so good it prompted me to write my first fan letter, which Ken actually responded to. The Guardswill blow you away. Usually I would round off with a sentence beginning with, "If you liked so and so, then you will love The Guards," but this time I cannot do it, because there is nothing like Bruen's work. You have to read him to understand. I have bought about 20 copies of this book for friends and every one of them now worships at the dark and bloody altar of Bruen, whose writing is a lot less melodramatic than mine without a single mention of dark and bloody altars.

* Eoin Colfer's first adult crime novel Pluggedwill be released in May

Claire Keegan

If This Is A Manby Primo Levi

Beginning with Levi's capture by the fascist militia in 1943, If This Is a Manbears witness to the Italian chemist's internment and survival at Auschwitz. Without drama these pages document the days and nights through which Levi and his fellow prisoners lived – and died – until the Russians released the survivors in 1945. The dignified prose never lingers unnecessarily but goes reluctantly forward, taking us face to face with human nature, with ourselves. What does it mean to be human? What happens in a world where everything is permitted? By its end it's understood that any one of us, given the opportunity and circumstances, will do anything we can get away with. What is permitted will happen. I read the book when I was 20 for a philosophy course at Loyola University, in New Orleans. After that I understood that we would all, on a daily basis, have to watch ourselves. Good and evil have nothing to do with race or nationality. I also realised that extraordinary acts of decency and tenderness can happen anywhere. And that happiness and unhappiness share common traits: "Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealisable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realisation of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite." Levi is almost the unwilling witness. The entire book is told in the tone of a whisper. While I'm sure this book had little or no influence on my own style of writing, I'm certain that, with regard to my thinking, it's the most influential book I've ever read.

* Claire Keegan is the author of Foster

Siobhán Parkinson

Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandby Charles Lutwidge Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll

Everyone should have a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandand Through the Looking Glass. This is a book – okay, two books, but by Dodgsonesque logic it counts as one – that is utterly of its time, as rich in allusion to contemporary political and academic figures and concepts as any Arthur Sullivan libretto. And yet out of this patchwork of Victoriana emerges a classic story that has amused and spooked (in about equal measure) generations of readers. Alice is classic crossover fiction: theoretically a children's book, it was written originally for a particular child, and published specifically as a children's story. In its unabridged literary form its appeal to adults is perhaps greater than its appeal to its putative audience of children. But if the availability and popularity of versions of Alice were to lead readers, young or older, to overlook the original text, it would be sad indeed. Because, for all its local allusions and now irrelevant in-jokes, Carroll's text is richly entertaining and highly provocative. "Jam every other day," the White Queen offers Alice, which sounds reasonably appealing until she points out that all this amounts to is jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today. And the deliciousness of this stretch of logic is rendered all the more delicious when you realise that "jam" here is really a version of iam, the Latin for "already" (sort of), a word that is not to be used in the present tense and therefore never applies to anything that happens today. O tempora, o mores.

* Siobhán Parkinson is Laureate na nÓg. Her most recent novel is Painted Ladies

Derek Landy

Mucho Mojoby Joe R Lansdale

I suppose a good way to work out how much you like a book is to count how many friends whose hands you've pushed it into. For me it stands at five copies of Mucho Mojo.That's five more than virtually any other book I own. It's a crime thriller, but it's also so much more. Lansdale takes the opportunity to shine a light on the poverty, prejudice and racism that blight the east Texas in which he grew up. It's like To Kill a Mockingbird,but with more punching. And bad language. It's funnier, too. Hap is a middle-aged, unemployed draft-dodger. His best friend, Leonard, is a black, gay Vietnam vet. The stars of eight books and counting, these fast-talking good ol' boys roam east Texas righting wrongs and kicking all kinds of ass. They take on drug dealers, the Klan, serial killers, the Dixie mafia, bikers, Mexican mobsters, and then they go back and beat up the drug dealers again. Because they like beating up drug dealers. Lansdale is a phenomenal writer of huge range, and every opportunity to spread his books to a wider audience should be seized with both hands. As well as crime, he writes horror and science fiction and westerns – often within the same book. Mucho Mojois a perfect introduction to his style. Hap and Leonard are flawed individuals, but they're honest, decent men living without compromise. They walk tall, they carry big sticks, and they're not afraid to use them.

* Derek Landy is the author of the Skulduggery Pleasantseries

Kevin Barry

Collected Poemsby Philip Larkin

No matter how bad you are feeling, Philip Larkin is feeling worse, and his Collected Poemswill provide a lifetime's consolation for the shoe-gazers, the down in the mouth, the grim brigade. But if Larkin's achievement is to give voice to a sensibility that's notably morose – he was indie before indie – he does it in a language that is direct and beautiful and that, in line after line, springs the bleak comedy of our lives' ennui: "He married a woman to stop her getting away / Now she's there all day." His woefulness may be virtuosic – "Man hands on misery to man / It deepens like a coastal shelf" – but beneath it lies a profound gift for uncovering the quiet moments of glow that give meaning. He mined his life diligently. A train journey while hung-over one June Saturday gave him, and us, The Whitsun Weddings:"An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, and someone running up to bowl. And none thought of the others they would never meet. Or how their lives would all contain this hour."

Larkin had this true poetical sense that life is elsewhere, and his influence persists. Without him, it could be argued, there would be no Mike Leigh, no Joy Division, and maybe no young souls in the 1980s in overcoats and backcombed hair. As the distance between his time and ours widens, the work begins to take on a fresh charge; it becomes elegiac for a world so quickly fading. Corduroy, stale tobacco, warm ale: his music now is a plainsong or lament for melancholy England in the 20th century.

* Kevin Barry's first novel, The City of Bohane,is out next month

Jon McGregor

George Saunders’s short stories

Hello. Can I interest you in the many and various works of George Saunders? Oh, go on. They’re good. They’re short stories.

No, hang on, come back. This will only take a minute. Okay. So there are three collections: Pastoralia, Civilwarland in Bad Declineand In Persuasion Nation.Take your pick. Come on.

What are they about? Well, they are mostly set in various institutional workplaces, and they are often about an individual striving to remain an individual within a deadening corporate environment. Well, exactly; most of us can hear that, can’t we? So also there’s often something slightly warped or strange about the setting – an historical theme park where the actors are permanently in character, or a non-humane pest control firm – that somehow throws some light on how warped or strange most of our workplaces and social structures really are.

Look, if I really could explain these stories in a neat soundbite you wouldn’t need to read them. You should read them. Go on. They’re funny.

Funny like how? Funny like in the kind of subtly accumulative way it’s really hard to quote, that’s like how. You still want a quote? How’s this? “Post-burial I write up the invoices and a paragraph or two on how overjoyed the raccoons were when we set them free.”

It’s funny in context.

Hello? Can I interest anyone else in the many and various works of George Saunders? Hello. Yes, these are stories that teach us about the very use of language in our world today. That’s right. His narrators always have a sense of over-reaching their own understanding, which Saunders artfully evokes by having them ever-so-slightly misarticulate some key phrases, usually drawn from the jargon-heavy worlds of self-help and business management, in a way that is funny, sad and nuanced, and reveals the dark heart that almost always beats behind obfuscation and spin.

Hello! Short stories! Funny stories! Stories so funny you’ll soil yourself! You sir? You madam?

* Jon McGregor's latest novel is Even The Dogs

Carmel Winters

Staying Aliveedited by Neil Astley

I've chosen a book that offers a kaleidoscopic vision of the seasons and milestones of a life. A book that I would guess has saved lives, as the title suggests. Staying Aliveis an anthology of essential poetry edited by Neil Astley.

We tend to think of poetry as a solitary expression but Astley has entered these disparate poets’ voices into a kind of conversation, sometimes whispered and sidelong, at other times raucous, riotous and downright saucy. Happily, there’s nothing exclusive about this volume of poetic chimes, its appeal strikes me as near universal. I’ve had it nine years and it still yields unexpected fruit. I’ve gifted it to many and hear it back from each reader as something else. It’s a lucky bag of a book that rewards every hand that dips.

I would raid every bookshelf of solipsistic self-help literature, burgle every medicine cabinet of mood enhancers and suppressants and replace them with this single song sheet of the human spirit.

* Carmel Winter's film Snapis on release now

Carmel Winters is the writer of the

Irish Times

Theatre Award winning play

B for Baby

David Nicholls

Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens

It must have been more than thirty years since I first read it, but Great Expectationsis the novel I keep coming back to, and the one I'd be most inclined to press into the hand of a new reader. Dickens was the first 'grown-up' novelist that I loved. It seemed remarkable to me that someone writing in 1860 could express so precisely how I felt one hundred and twenty years later. Since then I must have read it twenty times (recently too - I'm currently working on a movie adaptation). It's the supreme coming-of-age story, the perfect depiction of the excitement, the sadness and confusion of entering the adult world. A love story, a thriller, a satire, a story of class and prejudice and violence, it's a remarkable work, and a book that's informed and inspired my own work over and over again. '

* David Nicholls' is the author of One Day

Thomas McCarthy

Twenty Years A-Growingby Maurice O'Sullivan

It would have to be Twenty Years A-Growingby Maurice O'Sullivan, translated from the Irish by Moya Llewelyn Davies and George Thompson, and first published by Oxford in 1933. It is an extraordinary chronicle of what Thompson would later describe as a Homeric life on the Great Blasket island. It is one of the most magical books ever published and bathes the reader in a kelp and iodine karma of wellness and wholeness. Here, the sea and the communal mind cohere to create a pure Gaelic solo that rises above the orchestral din of modern life: 'to the south were the two Skelligs bathed in sunshine, the sea full of all kinds of sea-birds, the waves murmuring around us, Inishvickillaun and Inis-na-Bró growing bigger and bigger as we approached them.'

The book has always had a wide influence. E.M. Forster's Introductory Note captures its zesty newness: 'for here is the egg of a seabird - lovely, perfect, and laid this very morning' and Dylan Thomas worked hard on a film adaptation. But Robert Flaherty got to the cinema audience first with his Man of Aran. Muiris Ó Súileabháin later became a Garda and drowned tragically in his mid forties. But he has left behind a summer's day in Dingle, Ventry races, shoals of mackerel, islanders enriched by the wreckage of war, the lobster season: 'In the month of May 1919 my father came to me: 'I wonder, Maurice, would you be loath to do a lobster season with us this year?

Indeed I would not,’ I cried eagerly,’

Twenty Years A-Growingis full of such youthful eagerness, but enriched with layers of Kerry weather, Kerry storytelling, Kerry landscape and birdlife. I wish everyone on earth could read it.

* Thomas McCarthy's most recent poetry collection is The Last Geraldine Officer