Annabel Steadman (born 1992), who writes as A. F. Steadman, is a British author.
Steadman was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, from 2005, attending on music and academic scholarships, followed by languages and law at Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 2017, and a master's degree in creative writing at Cambridge. [1]
In 2020, Steadman received a "seven-figure" three-book contract for a fantasy series about "bloodthirsty unicorns". [1] This is believed to be the largest ever advance deal for a debut children's writer. [1] In the same week film rights were acquired by Sony Pictures. [2]
In 2022, Skandar and the Unicorn Thief, the first book in the Skandar series, was published. [3] The Sunday Times called it an "engrossing tale". [4] In November 2022, it was announced that Simon & Schuster had acquired three more books from Steadman. This will bring the Skandar series to five books, plus one untitled novel. The second book in the series, Skandar and the Phantom Rider, was published on 2 May 2023. [5] The third book in the series, Skandar and the Chaos Trials, was published on 25 April 2024. The fourth book in the series, Skandar and the Skeleton Curse, was published on 10 October 2024. The fifth book in the series will be published on 28th August 2025.
Fighting Fantasy is a series of single-player role-playing gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volume in the series was published in paperback by Puffin in 1982.
Skeleton Crew is a short story collection by American writer Stephen King, published by Putnam in June 1985. A limited edition of a thousand copies was published by Scream/Press in October 1985 (ISBN 978-0910489126), illustrated by J. K. Potter, containing an additional short story, "The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson", which had originally appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, and was later incorporated into King's 1987 novel The Tommyknockers. The original title of this book was Night Moves.
Peter Soyer Beagle is an American novelist and screenwriter, especially of fantasy fiction. His best-known work is The Last Unicorn (1968) which Locus subscribers voted the number five "All-Time Best Fantasy Novel" in 1987. During the last twenty-five years he has won several literary awards, including a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2011. He was named Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master by SFWA in 2018.
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment through multiple platforms. Through an intermediate holding company called Sony Film Holding Inc., it is operated as a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment Inc., which is itself a subsidiary of the Japanese multinational technology and media conglomerate Sony Group Corporation.
A winged unicorn is a fictional ungulate, typically portrayed as a horse, with wings like a pegasus and the horn of a unicorn. In some literature and media, it has been referred to as an alicorn, a word derived from the Italian word alicorno, or as a pegacorn, a portmanteau of pegasus and unicorn.
Simon & Schuster LLC is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.
Sony Pictures Animation Inc. is an American animation studio owned by Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Entertainment through their Motion Picture Group division and founded on May 9, 2002. The studio is based in Culver City, California. Most of the studio's films are distributed worldwide by Sony Pictures Releasing under their Columbia Pictures label, while direct-to-video releases are released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Geronimo Stilton is an Italian children's chapter book series created by Elisabetta Dami and written under the pen name of the title character. Scholastic Corporation began publishing the English version of the series in the US in February 2004. In the UK, the English books are published by Sweet Cherry Publishing. The series is set on a fictional version of Earth dominated by anthropomorphic mice and rats and focuses on the title character, a mouse who lives in New Mouse City on Mouse Island. A best-selling author in-universe, Geronimo Stilton, works as editor and publisher for the newspaper, The Rodent's Gazette. He has a younger sister named Thea Stilton, a cousin named Trap Stilton, and a nephew, nine-year-old Benjamin Stilton. Geronimo is a nervous, mild-mannered mouse who prefers a quiet life, yet keeps getting into faraway adventures with Thea, Trap, and Benjamin in both fictional and real locations. The books are written as fictional memoirs of him on these adventures. The books are designed and distributed in full color, depicting important words in the text as colored and in illustrative typefaces.
The Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers is a detective fiction series of books published by Aladdin Paperbacks, which replaced The Hardy Boys Digest paperbacks in early 2005. All the books in the series have been written under the pen name of Franklin W. Dixon.
Ghost Rider is a 2007 American superhero film written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson. Based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, it was produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment, Crystal Sky Pictures, and Relativity Media, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film stars Nicolas Cage as the titular character, with Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Sam Elliott, Donal Logue, Matt Long, and Peter Fonda in supporting roles. The film follows Johnny Blaze, a motorcycle stuntman who sells his soul and becomes the Ghost Rider, a bounty hunter of evil demons.
Holly Black is an American writer and editor best known for her children's and young adult fiction. Her most recent work is the New York Times bestselling young adult Folk of the Air series. She is also well known for The Spiderwick Chronicles, a series of children's fantasy books she created with writer and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, and her debut trilogy of young adult novels officially called the Modern Faerie Tales. Black has won a Nebula Award and a Newbery Honor.
Curtis Jobling is a British illustrator, animator and author, born in Blackpool, England but lives in Warrington.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is an American children's picture book written by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert, and published by Simon & Schuster in 1989. The book teaches the alphabet through rhyming couplets, and charted The New York Times Best Seller list for children's books in 2000.
Kelly Adam Asbury was an American film director, writer, voice actor, and illustrator. He was best known for directing animated films, including Shrek 2, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Gnomeo & Juliet, Smurfs: The Lost Village, and UglyDolls.
Alethea Kontis is an American writer of Teen & Young Adult Books, picture books and speculative fiction, primarily for children, as well as an essayist and storyteller.
The University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) is a department of the University of Cambridge that provides continuing education programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, ranging from undergraduate certificates to master’s degrees.
Samantha Shannon is a British author of dystopian and fantasy fiction. Her debut novel, The Bone Season, was published in 2013 and is the first of a seven-book series.
Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the "Big Five" English-language publishers.
The Smurfs have appeared in five feature-length films and two short films loosely based on The Smurfs comic book series created by the Belgian comics artist Peyo and the 1980s animated TV series it spawned. They theatrically debuted in a 1965 animated feature film that was followed by a 1976 animated film titled The Smurfs and the Magic Flute. Twenty-eight to thirty years after The Magic Flute was released in the United States, a 2011 feature film and a 2013 sequel were produced by Sony Pictures Animation and released by Columbia Pictures. Live-action roles include Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris, and Jayma Mays, while the voice-over roles include Anton Yelchin, Jonathan Winters, Katy Perry, and George Lopez. A fully animated reboot titled Smurfs: The Lost Village was released through Sony in April 2017. An animated musical film titled The Smurfs Movie produced by Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Movies will release in July 2025.
Alexandra Pierson, known professionally by her pen name Alex Aster, is a Colombian-American young adult author. She is best known for the young adult fantasy series Lightlark, and the middle-grade fantasy series Emblem Island.