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 serious crime, generally a murder. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has multiple subgenres, including detective fiction, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
Michael Swanwick is an American fantasy and science fiction author who began publishing in the early 1980s.
Barbara Hambly is an American novelist and screenwriter within the genres of fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction. She is the author of the bestselling Benjamin January mystery series featuring a free man of color, a musician and physician, in New Orleans in the antebellum years. She also wrote a novel about Mary Todd Lincoln.
Anne Bishop is an American fantasy writer. Her most noted work is the Black Jewels series. She won the Crawford Award in 2000 for the first three Black Jewels books, sometimes called the Black Jewels trilogy: Daughter of the Blood, Heir to the Shadows, and Queen of the Darkness.
Michelle Michiko Sagara is a Japanese-Canadian author of fantasy literature, active since the early 1990s. She has published as Michelle Sagara, as Michelle West and as Michelle Sagara West. Sagara has received two nominations for the John W. Campbell Award.
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American published paleontologist and author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including ten novels, series of comic books, and more than two hundred and fifty published short stories, novellas, and vignettes. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards.
Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White. His latest book is a novel for young adults, D: A Tale of Two Worlds, published in 2020.
Francis Paul Wilson is an American author, primarily in the science fiction and horror genres, and a medical doctor.
Tony O'Neill is an English writer based in New York. A one-time musician with Kenickie (1997–98), Marc Almond (1997–98), The Brian Jonestown Massacre (1999) and Kelli Ali (2001–04), O'Neill is also the author of several books including Digging the Vein (2006), Down and Out on Murder Mile (2008) and Sick City (2010).
Simon Clark is a horror novelist from Doncaster, England. He is the author of the novel The Night of the Triffids, the novella Humpty's Bones, and the short story Goblin City Lights, which have all won awards.
Louise Welsh is an English-born author of short stories and psychological thrillers, resident in Glasgow, Scotland. She has also written three plays, an opera, edited volumes of prose and poetry, and contributed to journals and anthologies. In 2004, she received the Corine Literature Prize.
Canongate Books is an independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
James Meek is a British novelist and journalist, author of The People's Act of Love. He was born in London, England, and grew up in Dundee, Scotland.
Lucy Sussex is an author working in fantasy and science fiction, children's and teenage writing, non-fiction and true crime. She is also an editor, reviewer, academic and teacher, and currently resides in Melbourne, Australia.
Steven Millhauser is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Martin Dressler.
Peter Crowther is a British journalist, short story writer, novelist, editor, publisher and anthologist. He is the founder of PS Publishing. He edits a series of themed anthologies of science fiction short stories published by DAW books. He is also the editor of Postscripts, an anthology established in 2004, releasing since 2012 the Exotic Gothic series.
Michael Raymond Donald Ashley is a British bibliographer, author and editor of science fiction, mystery, and fantasy.
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.
Aliya Whiteley is a British novelist, short story writer and poet.
