Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. Most crime drama focuses on criminal investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
This is a list of book lists (bibliographies) on Wikipedia, organized by various criteria.
Genre fiction, also known as formula fiction or popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults.
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of high medieval and early modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. It developed further from the epics as time went on; in particular, "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates."
In literature, psychological fiction is a narrative genre that emphasizes interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of its characters. The mode of narration examines the reasons for the behaviours of the character, which propel the plot and explain the story. Psychological realism is achieved with deep explorations and explanations of the mental states of the character's inner person, usually through narrative modes such as stream of consciousness and flashbacks.
Adventure fiction is a type of fiction that usually presents danger, or gives the reader a sense of excitement. Some adventure fiction also satisfies the literary definition of romance fiction.
The Romantic hero is a literary archetype referring to a character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has themselves at the center of their own existence. The Romantic hero is often the protagonist in a literary work, and the primary focus is on the character's thoughts rather than their actions.
Stephen Thomas Knight MA (Oxon.), PhD (Sydney), FAHA, FEA was, until September 2011, a distinguished research professor in English literature at Cardiff University; and is a professorial fellow of Literature at the University of Melbourne. His areas of expertise include medieval English and European literature, Robin Hood, Merlin, cultural studies, crime fiction, and Australian matters. He has authored over thirty books, and is well known in the public sphere for his contribution to a range of fields. His most recent books have been The Politics of Myth (2015), Towards Sherlock Holmes: A Thematic History of Crime Fiction in the 19th Century World (2017), Australian Crime Fiction: A 200-year History (2018), The Fiction of G.W.M. Reynolds: The Man Who Outsold Dickens (2019) and The University is Closed for Open Day: Themes and Scenes from 21st Century Australia (2019).
English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, are called Old English. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English. Despite being set in Scandinavia, it has achieved national epic status in England. However, following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. The English spoken after the Normans came is known as Middle English. This form of English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a London-based form of English, became widespread. Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), author of The Canterbury Tales, was a significant figure developing the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 also helped to standardise the language, as did the King James Bible (1611), and the Great Vowel Shift.
The Mermaids Singing (1995) is a crime novel by Scottish author Val McDermid. The first featuring her recurring protagonist, Dr. Tony Hill, it was adapted into the pilot episode of ITV1's television series based on McDermid's work, Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris.
"Lot No. 249" is a Gothic horror short story by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in Harper's Magazine in 1892. The story tells of a University of Oxford athlete named Abercrombie Smith who notices a strange series of events surrounding Edward Bellingham, an Egyptology student who owns many ancient Egyptian artefacts, including a mummy. After seeing his mummy disappear and reappear, and two instances of Bellingham's enemies being attacked, Smith concludes that Bellingham is re-animating his mummy.
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The English word to describe such a work derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story ", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance". Such "romances" should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love. M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
The novel in Scotland includes all long prose fiction published in Scotland and by Scottish authors since the development of the literary format in the eighteenth century. The novel was soon a major element of Scottish literary and critical life. Tobias Smollett's picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle mean that he is often seen as Scotland's first novelist. Other Scots who contributed to the development of the novel in the eighteenth century include Henry Mackenzie and John Moore.
Since the characters inception in the 1960s, Spider-Man has appeared in several forms of media, including novels and book series.
The Lollards is an 1822 historical novel by the British writer Thomas Gaspey. It was first released in three volumes by the London publishing house Longman. It focuses on the Lollards, a proto-Protestant movement of the fifteenth century, and draws inspiration and style from the popular historical novels of Walter Scott. It also focuses on the invention of the printing press and makes reference to the contemporary Trial of Queen Caroline.
The Self-Condemned is an 1836 historical novel by the British writer Thomas Gaspey, published in three volumes by Richard Bentley in London. Set in Elizabethan Ireland, it was the first novel Gaspey had published since George Godfrey in 1828 due to his work on The Sunday Times. In a preface he acknowledged the assistance of the Irish antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker for the historical background. The American edition was released by Harper and Brothers in New York. The principle characters are Edmund Nagle an Irish chieftain and his sister Grace, at the time of the Munster Plantation and Desmond Rebellion.
Calthorpe, or Fallen Fortunes is an 1821 novel by the British writer Thomas Gaspey. It was published in three volumes by the London firm Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme. Partly set in Germany amongst British merchants, it contains a murder mystery. The negative portrayal of banks and financiers is a recurring theme in British literature of the era.
The Magic of Wealth is an 1815 novel by the British writer Thomas Skinner Surr, published in three volumes by Cadell & Davies in London. It focuses on the development of a new resort town by financial speculators. Surr negatively contrasts the speculative banker behind the development with the traditional elite represented by the local squire. Thematically it is similar to Jane Austen's unfinished Sanditon (1817) and Walter Scott's Saint Ronan's Well (1823). Surr's criticism of banks and financial speculation was a common theme in other novels of the era, including Thomas Gaspey's Calthorpe (1821).
