Lynda La Plante is the writer of Prime Suspect and the best-selling author of more than 40books. Her new novel Hidden Killers is out now. She is talking about three books that deeply affected her. 

Wuthering Heights

By Emily Bronte

One night as a child, I walked quietly into the bathroom when I heard a voice calling, "Let me in; let me in!" along with a terrible knock on a window coming from my grandma's room. Quite afraid, I cried, "Help me! Where's the ghost?" Grandma looked up and said, "Don't be silly; I'm listening to a story on the radio called Wuthering Heights." I joined my grandma and realized then how you could take a story from a book and change it to a different medium(媒介).

The Water-Babies

By Charles Kingsley

This classic Victorian story caught my imagination as a child. It made me consider the unfairness of life —why is one child sleeping in comfort and another forced to climb through a chimney(烟囱)?I especially loved all the questions Tom asks on his adventures, many of which are about social unfairness. All my life I've asked questions too. 

The Faerie Queene

By Edmund Spenser

I used to have problems reading—I was told I had "word blindness". My mother gave me a copy of Spenser's poem and said, "If you can learn some of this then you'll be able to read anything." I rose to the challenge. I learned it off by heart and was so proud of myself for keeping something that difficult in mind. Then I learned that I could learn words just as well as anyone.