How to map a list of related DTOs in a DTO: Nesting DTO mapping

Suppose you have a fully defined relationship of books and authors in a large database with many other relationships

public class Book
{
   public int Id { get; set; }
   public string Title { get; set; }
   ...
   Public int AuthorId { get; set; }
   Public Author Author { get; set; }
}

public class Author
{
   public int Id { get; set; }
   public int GroupId { get; set; }
   public string Name { get; set; }
   ...
   public List<Book> Books { get; set; }
   ...
}

And in your controller you want to return a list of authors, each containing the list of books associated with them using DTOs.

public class BookDTO
{
   public int Id { get; set; }
   public string Title { get; set; }
}

public class AuthorDTO
{
   public int Id { get; set; }
   public string Name { get; set; }
   public List<BookDTO> Books { get; set; }
}

What is the right way to generate that list of DTOs within a DTO?

Could you do something like this?

var author = from a in _context.authors.Where(a => a.groupId == someGroup)
   select new AuthorDTO()
   {
      Id = a.Id,
      Name = a.Name,
      Books = (from b in a.Books
         select new BookDTO()
         {
            Id = b.Id,
            Title = b.Title
         }).ToList()
   };

Or maybe something like this?

var author = from a in _context.authors.Where(a => a.groupId == someGroup)
   select new AuthorDTO()
   {
      Id = a.Id,
      Name = a.Name,
      Books = (from b in _context.books.Where(b => b.AuthorId == a.AuthorId)
         select new BookDTO()
         {
            Id = b.Id,
            Title = b.Title
         }).ToList()
    };

EDIT:

To hopefully be a bit clearer, I rephrased and reposed my question here:

How to return list of DTO with nested lists of related DTO