Donald Richard DeLillo is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter, and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as consumerism, nuclear war, the complexities of language, art, television, the advent of the Digital Age, mathematics, politics, economics, and sports.
Sheila Martin Watson was a Canadian novelist, critic and teacher. She "is best known for her modernist novel, The Double Hook." The Canadian Encyclopedia declares that: "Publication of Watson's novel The Double Hook (1959) marks the start of contemporary writing in Canada."
James Douglas Graham Wood is an English[a] literary critic, essayist and novelist.
Joseph Prince McElroy is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He is noted for his long postmodern novels such as Women and Men.
Dan Chaon is an American writer. Formerly a creative writing professor, he is the author of three short story collections and four novels.
The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean is an 1857 novel written by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. One of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes, the story relates the adventures of three boys marooned on a South Pacific island, the only survivors of a shipwreck.
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons. The Da Vinci Code follows symbologist Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris entangles them in a dispute between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus and Mary Magdalene having had a child together.
Mary McGarry Morris is an American novelist, short story author and playwright from New England. She uses its towns as settings for her works. In 1991, Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times described Morris as "one of the most skillful new writers at work in America today"; The Washington Post has described her as a "superb storyteller"; and The Miami Herald has called her "one of our finest American writers".
The Prieuré de Sion, translated as Priory of Sion, was a fraternal organisation founded in France and dissolved in 1956 by Pierre Plantard in his failed attempt to create a prestigious neo-chivalric order. In the 1960s, Plantard began claiming that his self-styled order was the latest front for a secret society founded by crusading knight Godfrey of Bouillon, on Mount Zion in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, under the guise of the historical monastic order of the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. As a framework for his grandiose assertion of being both the Great Monarch prophesied by Nostradamus and a Merovingian pretender, Plantard further claimed the Priory of Sion was engaged in a centuries-long benevolent conspiracy to install a secret bloodline of the Merovingian dynasty on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. To Plantard's surprise, all of his claims were fused with the notion of a Jesus bloodline and popularised by the authors of the 1982 speculative nonfiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, whose conclusions would later be borrowed by Dan Brown for his 2003 mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code.
Helen Catherine Knapp Markley Miller was an American writer of historical and biographical fiction for children taking place in the Western United States.
Ancient History: A Paraphase is Joseph McElroy's third novel, published in 1971. It presents itself as a hastily written essay/memoir/confession. The character Dom is sometimes described as a fictionalized Norman Mailer.
Women and Men is Joseph McElroy's sixth novel. Published in 1987, it is 1192 pages long. Somewhat notably, because of its size, the uncorrected proof was issued in two volumes.
Lookout Cartridge is Joseph McElroy's fourth novel, published by Knopf in 1974.
Plus is Joseph McElroy's fifth novel. Set in some unspecified future, it tells the story of Imp Plus, a disembodied brain controlling IMP, the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform, in earth orbit. The novel consists of Imp Plus's thoughts as he tries to comprehend his limited existence, while struggling with language, limited memories, and communicating with Ground Control. The plot is driven by Imp Plus's recall of fragments of his past and of language, his improving comprehension of his present, all while his medical condition gradually deteriorates.
A Smuggler's Bible is Joseph McElroy's first novel. David Brooke—who talks of himself in a split-personality manner—narrates a framing tale that consists of him "smuggling" his essence into eight autobiographical manuscripts, although their connection with Brooke is not always clear. Brooke seems to deteriorate, while his fictions become more real.
Actress in the House is Joseph McElroy's eighth novel. Lawyer Bill Daley follows up an unusual phone call from stage actress Becca Lang by attending her show. Daley is appalled when Becca is slugged rather brutally in what was clearly supposed to have been a stage slap. He stays afterward, and she moves into his life.
"Mr. Difficult", subtitled "William Gaddis and the problem of hard-to-read books", is a 2002 essay by Jonathan Franzen that appeared in the 9/30/2002 issue of The New Yorker. It was reprinted in the paperback edition of How to Be Alone without the subtitle.
Joan Kahn was a New York City-based American author, anthologist, and editor, widely regarded as the preeminent mystery/suspense editor of her time. Described variously as the "doyenne of suspense," "the doyenne of mystery editors," and "publishing's grande dame of detective stories," Kahn first came to prominence during her extended reign (1946-1980) at Harper & Brothers, much of it spent creating and overseeing the longstanding "Harper Novel of Suspense" series. The Joan Kahn imprint, instituted during her Harper tenure, soon became a sought-after imprimatur for mystery connoisseurs. Some of Kahn's more celebrated signings include John Creasey, Patricia Highsmith, Julian Symons, Dick Francis, and Tony Hillerman.
Cannonball is Joseph McElroy's ninth novel. Set in Southern California and Iraq, it tells the story of Zach, a young and naive military photographer who stumbles upon a secret network of underground water pipes in Iraq used to smuggle what are apparently scrolls containing the original prosperity Gospel, an interview with Jesus peddling free market doctrine.
Systems novel is a literary genre named by Tom LeClair in his 1987 book In the Loop: Don DeLillo and the Systems Novel, and explored further in LeClair's 1989 book, The Art of Excess: Mastery in Contemporary American Fiction. LeClair used systems theory to critique novels by authors including Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and Ursula Le Guin. Citing Fritjof Capra's description of systems theory as a "new vision of reality" LeClair invoked ideas from thinkers such as James Lovelock, Gregory Bateson and Douglas Hofstadter to analyse how the novels in question depicted processes and relationships within social, cultural, economic and political systems. LeClair's systems novels were all "long, large and dense" and all in some way striving for "mastery", showing similarity to Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! in "range of reference, artistic sophistication, and desire for profound effect."
