John Winslow Irving is an American-Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.
Robert Albert Bloch was an American fiction writer, primarily of crime, psychological horror and fantasy, much of which has been dramatized for radio, cinema and television. He also wrote a relatively small amount of science fiction. His writing career lasted 60 years, including more than 30 years in television and film. He began his professional writing career immediately after graduation, aged 17. Best known as the writer of Psycho (1959), the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. He was a protégé of H. P. Lovecraft, who was the first to seriously encourage his talent. However, while he started emulating Lovecraft and his brand of cosmic horror, he later specialized in crime and horror stories working with a more psychological approach.
The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.
Catch-22 is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot.
Death on the Nile is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 1 November 1937 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
Sheep are quadrupedal, ruminant mammals that are typically kept as livestock.
John Dufresne is an American author of French Canadian descent born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Worcester State College in 1970 and the University of Arkansas in 1984. He is a professor in the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program of the English Department at Florida International University. In 2012, he won a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for his work.
John Peel is a British writer, best known for his TV series tie-in novels and novelisations. He has written under several pseudonyms, including "John Vincent" and "Nicholas Adams". He lives on Long Island, New York. While his wife is a US citizen, Peel continues to travel under a British passport.
Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Nick Charles, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.
The Discworld Companion is an encyclopaedia of the Discworld fictional universe, created by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs. Four editions have been published, under varying titles.
During the run of the TV series The X-Files, many books based on it were released, written, including novels based on episodes, a series of comic books from Topps Comics, and many "official" and "unauthorized" non-fiction books.
Peter Maas was an American journalist and author. He was born in New York City and attended Duke University. Maas had Dutch and Irish ancestry.
Marvel Comics Super Special: Blade Runner or just Blade Runner is a comic book adaptation of the film Blade Runner, published by Marvel Comics in 1982. It was written by Archie Goodwin with art by Al Williamson, Carlos Garzon with Dan Green and Ralph Reese.
Rachel Simon is an American author of both fiction and non-fiction. Her six books include the 2011 novel The Story of Beautiful Girl, and the 2002 memoir Riding the Bus with My Sister. Her work has been adapted for film, television, radio, and stage.
Simon Maginn is a British writer who has written five novels under his own name: Sheep, Virgins and Martyrs, A Sickness of the Soul, Methods of Confinement and Rattus. The last of these was published alongside a novella by Gary Fry entitled The Invisible Architect of Psychopathy. Maginn's novels are horror/psychological thrillers. A film version of Sheep was released as The Dark in 2005.
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago. It is a fictional re-telling of Jesus Christ's life, depicting him as a flawed, humanised character with passions and doubts. The novel proved controversial, especially among the Roman Catholic Church, with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano accusing Saramago of having a "substantially anti-religious vision". It was praised by other critics as a "deeply philosophical, provocative and compelling work".
A Change of Climate is a novel by English author Hilary Mantel, first published in 1994 by Viking Books. At the time The Observer described it as the best book she had written. It was published in the United States by Henry Holt in 1997 and was recognised by the New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of that year. The novel has also been identified as one of the best of the 1990s.
