Agree about status of Brideshead. Also, see the superb PBS film version, not 2008 film. PBS version is faithful to the original, including much dialogue.

"Millstone" is my favorite: very relevant today.

Start with his short stories, like the classic "A Rose for Emily" and moved out, learning about the recurring characters in Jefferson, his fictional town.

Although somewhat racist, he portrays the South in Shakespearean complexity.

Superb tetralogy (set of four novels) about the end of the British Raj in India, culminating in independence in 1948. It follows a set of characters, English and Indian, and although Scott was an Englishman, is sympathetic to the Indian point of view.

ENGULFED is not as good as his other books: too many rambling anecdotes instead of unified essays/stories.

Plague of Doves is wonderful: read it if you like multiple narratives and an intro (for most of us) to a new culture and place.

BEL CANTO is superb: about language, love, lots more. A must-read.

IN LOVE AND TROUBLE contains, for me, some of her best short fiction. When she gets into animal rights and vegetarianism, and anything else overtly polemical, her fiction suffers.

"A Bit on the Side" and "Cheating at Canasta" are two of his many short story collections. He also has a number of novels. He depicts with superb acuity the loneliness and the subtleties of the human psyche.

"The Laying on of Hands" is a vastly amusing satire of modern Britain in the age of AIDS and the demise of God. But for the absence of wonderful narrator's voice, it woudl make a good short film .