Lucky Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin, Dave Robicheaux. And Jane Eyre still tops my list.

I agree with Judith Martin and Frannie. I thought the question related to modern literary heroes and heroines found in novels, not the authors. I shall the answer the question as I thought it was asked but I will also include screenwriters. Why? Because I want to include the character of Indiana Jones, created by George Lucas. Indiana is a hero of the first order when he shouts out “That ‘cross’ belongs in a museum!” Also on my list would be the character of Professor Robert Johnston of Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code. The professor a wonderful hero who was pulled into a mystery for the ages and he managed to not get lost. “Play fair, Professor”. I also include Sophie from the same book, a heroine who only looks forward until she is forced to look back into history; she survives magnificently. Modern novels? I guess that negates Gatsby, and all the characters created by Steinbeck, Hemingway or Jack London. I really would like to include Jake, the hero from Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”. Sad hero but a true one, made impotent because of his war wounds but able to survive to be a gallant friend to other members of the “lost generation” roaming about Europe in the 1920s. Finally, I would like to include a character from John Grisham’s novel, The Client. Defense attorney Love proves to be a heroine to a young boy and was also able to accept the loss of custody of her own children with a clear conscience, knowing she was manipulated by her former husband.

Echo Liz and Whoopi’s choices.

Kinsey Milhone, Kay Scapetta, Stephanie Plum, Alex Cross and Alex Delaware.

J.K. Rowling hands down! She has inspired millions of children and unlocked the magic of imagination and books. Harry Potter, the boy who lived. He shows us all that there is light and dark in everyone and that love is the most powerful force in this world. Anne Rice, who has endured more pain in this life than one should have to. Who explores the dark, romantic corners of imagination. Bonnie, I also LOVE LOVE LOVE Jake from The Sun Also Rises! I Love Hemingway.

I second Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee … hi, Frannie Em ! … and more of my (relatively) contemporary literary Heroines and Heroes … Zooey Glass; Dido Twite; Lyra Belacqua; Goldmund; Dshamilja; Phil and Vinca; Janie Crawford; Ammu, Rahel and Estha; Nazneen and Hasina; Zoli; … … … (so many books , so little time …)

Frannie got to it first gees, : ) But yes Scout , Jem and even Boo and Dad wasn’t chopped liver, I still get chills when when he leaves the court and the gallery stands. Jimmy and Antonia, Willa Cather’s “My Antonia” Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D is the only one contemporary I can think of right away, I like to answers these questions as if where all sitting a bar… I mean in someone’s living room off the top of my head no running to our reading rooms ! Doctor Taylor was the character in her own book, she had a stroke and lived to write about in a unique way. She is a neuroantomist ( brain scientist ) and so the day she had her stroke she told it from just a women having a stroke through the brain of a Doctor if she isn’t a heroin Nancy Drew like isn’t the best detective ever.

Really, truly, you mustn’t miss Beryl Markham’s West with the Night, as I promise you will not be able to get the British woman author and her true tale - a tale of her life In Africa, never to be equalled, out of your head. A woman of captivating presence whose affairs scandalized Kenya, Beryl Markham became famous as being the first woman to fly from west to east over the Atlantic, crashing in Nova Scotia. You all remember Meryl Streep as Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa, don’t you? It was her husband, Denys Hatton, who taught Beryl to fly … and we can only guess what other talents she may have learned from him in his private time. LOLOL Her disheveled private life wins her no prizes for marital or parental virtues, but her success at doing what she wanted to do in a world decidedly defined by men was one that has been an inspiration for my own decidedly adventurous life. Perhaps Ernest Hemingway will be able to twist your arm in a far better way than Joan, who idolized Beryl Markham, so I pulled up what he has written about West with the Night. Hemingway “tells it like it is” and you’ll love what he has to say about her book: “Did you read Beryl Markham’s book, West With The Night? …She has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers … it really is a bloody wonderful book.” I’m trying, I am trying to live up to the unconventional woman that Beryl Markham was. . well, perhaps without “the unpleasant” and bitchy part!!! God, it is fun!!!!

Some of my favorite characters are (without really thinking too hard): Samuel Pickwick (Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers); Josephine Bonaparte; Mary Poppins; Scout and Jem; “Jo” in Little Women; Rayford Steele, Chloe Steele, Buck Williams, and Chaim from the Left Behind Series; Mother Abagail, Stuart Redman, Nick Andros, and Nadeen Cross from Stephen King’s The Stand.