The Green Mile (Stephen King, 1996)
Wow. I just love King.
After At Swim, Two Boys, I was looking for something light and easy and familiar, and this turned out to be a pretty great choice. It's not King's best, and I'm not sure if it'd break the top five, but it'd come close, and it's got all the hallmarks of a great King novel. The supernatural element is strong throughout, but it never plays as anything more than a starting point in a whole lot of dealing with other stuff. Like the death penalty, mortality, good and evil, miracles, healing, all of it. It's never didactic, it's never sentimental, but it does pull you in close, and stab you in the guts.
I knew someone once who said that one of the most unique things about King was his preparedness to spend six pages describing a character who dies on the eighth. He doesn't do that so much here, which is linked to the form and the structure, but he does build these incredibly exacting portraits of characters, more so than you realise, which makes part six especially devastating.
King's a really brilliant writer, and in this, he's right near the top of his game. Great stuff.