But Where's the Magic? (Or Nonfantasy Gems by Fantasy Authors)

Ever since I discovered that there were books about other worlds, worlds full of magic, I have been an avid reader of fantasy.  Oh, I read before I discovered fantasy, and I still on occasion read other fiction (and a massive pile of nonfiction) fantasy always reels me back in.  My best and favorite companions, the ones that lack covers or are in pieces, or replaced so many times that it sometimes feels as if I spend more on them than on new books, are fantasy.

Strangely though, my favorite books by authors are often their non-fantasy.  Two of the better known fantasy writers still writing are Phillip Pullman, famous for the His Dark Materials trilogy, and Robin McKinley, author of The Hero and the Crown, The Blue Sword, winners of the Newbery metal and Newbery honor respectively as well as numerous retellings of fairy tales and other fantasy.

Yet my favorite books by Phillip Pullman are the Sally Lockhart books.  These lovely Victorian mystery thrillers about opium, weapons trading, stolen jewels, kidnapping, secret societies, and small European kingdoms wove a separate world for me as complete as the best of Pullman’s fantasy.  I babbled and cheered at my parents when Billie Piper (Rose from Doctor Who) starred in the television adaptation in away I didn’t for the movie premiere of The Golden Compass.  The novel gripped me and kept me under the covers with my reading light, and still does when I go back to reread it.

My favorite Robin McKinley book likewise is non-fantasy.  The Outlaws of Sherwood, a retelling of Robin Hood, is so beautifully written that I still have to stop while reading it just to admire the richness of the prose.  This book made me like changes in third person centering.  This is the book that reminds me that I like to write (as if I had any doubts!)

This isn’t to say that I don’t like the fantasy by these authors, far from it!  Pullman’s place on my bookshelf is assured, and my copies of The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword require at least a whole dispenser’s worth of tape to hold them each together.  Actually, they’re both also so fantastically worded that I read them when I’m out of energy and figuring out where a period goes sounds like too much work.

Does anyone else find themselves in this same situation, traitor to one’s beloved genre because of an old favorite author’s brilliant non-fantasy?  If so, what books?