Northanger Abbey is a coming-of-age novel and a satire of Gothic novels written by the English author Jane Austen. Although the title page is dated 1818 and it was published posthumously in 1817 with Persuasion, Northanger Abbey was completed in 1803, making it the first of Austen's novels to be completed in full. The story concerns Catherine Morland, the naïve young protagonist, and her journey to a better understanding of herself and of the world around her after Catherine's fondness for Gothic novels and her active imagination distorts her view of the world.
Doris May Lessing was a British novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia, where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).
Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd, is an English biographer, novelist and short story writer.
Zadie Smith FRSL is a British novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
Persuasion is the last novel completed by the English author Jane Austen. It was published on 20 December 1817, along with Northanger Abbey, six months after her death, although the title page is dated 1818.
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" is among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and was probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. He also goes so far as to describe two sets of clothing for her in his General Prologue. She holds her own among the bickering pilgrims, and evidence in the manuscripts suggests that although she was first assigned a different, plainer tale—perhaps the one told by the Shipman—she received her present tale as her significance increased. She calls herself both Alyson and Alys in the prologue, but to confuse matters these are also the names of her 'gossib', whom she mentions several times, as well as many female characters throughout The Canterbury Tales.
Lorrie Moore is an American writer, critic, and essayist. She is best known for her short stories, some of which have won major awards. Since 1984, she has also taught creative writing.
Scream of the Shalka is a Flash-animated series based on the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The series is the 40th anniversary special and was originally released in six weekly parts from 13 November to 18 December 2003 on bbc.co.uk's Doctor Who website.
Fay Weldon was an English author, essayist and playwright.
Memoirs of a Geisha is a historical fiction novel by American author Arthur Golden, published in 1997. The novel, told in first person perspective, tells the story of Nitta Sayuri and the many trials she faces on the path to becoming and working as a geisha in Kyoto, Japan, before, during and after World War II.
Alison Stewart Lurie was an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she wrote many non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.
Martin Day is a screenwriter and novelist best known for his work on various spin-offs related to the BBC Television series Doctor Who, and many episodes of the soaps Fair City, Doctors and Family Affairs. Having worked previously at Bath Spa University, he is now visiting lecturer in creative writing at the University of Winchester and the Wessex regional representative of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.
Valerie Taylor was an American author of books published in the lesbian pulp fiction genre, as well as poetry and novels after the "golden age" of lesbian pulp fiction. She also published as Nacella Young, Francine Davenport, and Velma Tate. Her publishers included Naiad Press, Banned Books, Universal, Gold Medal Books, Womanpress, Ace and Midwood-Tower.
The Bride Wore Black is a 1940 American novel written by Cornell Woolrich, initially published under the pseudonym William Irish. Although it was Woolrich's seventh published novel, it was the first in the noir/pulp style for which he would become known, his previous novels having been Jazz Age fiction about the wealthy and privileged.
Alison Weir is a British author and public historian. She primarily writes about the history of English royal women and families, in the form of biographies that explore their historical setting. She has also written numerous works of historical fiction.
The War Between the Tates is a campus novel by Alison Lurie that takes place at an elite university during the upheavals of the late 1960s and gently and deftly skewers all sides in the turmoils and conflicts of that era — opposition to the Vietnam war, the start of the feminist movement, the generation gap, sexual liberation, experimentation with drugs, and student unrest.
Sadie Jones is an English writer and novelist best known for her award-winning debut novel, The Outcast (2008).
Sandra Newman is an American writer. She has a BA from Polytechnic of Central London, and an MA from the University of East Anglia.
Susanna Mary Clarke is an English author known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller.
Milkman is a historical psychological fiction novel written by the Northern Irish author Anna Burns. Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the story follows an 18-year-old girl, "middle sister," who is harassed by an older married man known as "the milkman" and then as "Milkman". It is Burns's first novel to be published after Little Constructions in 2007, and is her third overall.
