To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Harper Lee wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird" in 1960, and didn't publish anything since.
Maybe she's afraid of messing with perfection: the book is perfectly balanced: funny and grim, childlike and mature, noble and savage. Lee slowly pushes the character Atticus to the front of the stage as the book progresses in a way that is nothing short of brilliant, as is the novel's transformation from a Lindgren-type story of kids in the South at its best, into a dark tale of the South at its worst. It's kind, but never sentimental. That is how a good book should be.