Favorite Authors

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. He was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" Larsson was a Swedish writer, journalist, and activist. He is best known for writing the Millennium trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, starting in 2005, after he died of a sudden heart attack. The trilogy was adapted as three motion pictures in Sweden, and one in the U.S.. The publisher commissioned David Lagercrantz to expand the trilogy into a longer series, which has six novels as of September 2019. For much of his life, Larsson lived and worked in Stockholm. His journalistic work covered socialist politics and he acted as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, Anansi Boys, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. It was later adapted into a critically acclaimed stage play at the Royal National Theatre in London, England that The Independent called "...theatre at its best".

Douglas Noël Adams was an English author and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.

Jason Pargin, known by his former pen name David Wong, is an American humor writer. He is the former executive editor of humor website Cracked.com, a recurring guest in the Cracked Podcast, and has written six novels: John Dies at the End (2007), This Book Is Full of Spiders (2012), Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (2015), What the Hell Did I Just Read (2017), Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick (2020) and If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (2022). John Dies at the End was adapted into a film of the same name in 2012.

Mark Z. Danielewski (; born March 5, 1966) is an American fiction author. He is most widely known for his debut novel House of Leaves (2000), which won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. His second novel, Only Revolutions (2006), was nominated for the National Book Award.

Danielewski began work on a 27-volume series, The Familiar, although he completed only 5 volumes before halting the project in 2017.

Danielewski's work is characterized by an intricate, multi-layered typographical variation, or page layout, which he refers to as "signiconic". Sometimes known as visual writing, the typographical variation corresponds directly, at any given narratological point in time, to the physical space of the events in the fictional world as well as the physical space of the page and the reader. Early on, critics characterized his writing as being ergodic literature, and Danielewski has described his style as:

Jerry Stahl (born September 28, 1953) is an American novelist and screenwriter. His works include the 1995 memoir of addiction Permanent Midnight. A 1998 film adaptation followed with Ben Stiller in the lead role.

Stahl has worked extensively in film and television.

Stahl grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His family is Jewish. His father, David Henry Stahl, emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union; he served a term as Attorney General of Pennsylvania and was later appointed as a federal judge. David had previously worked as a coal miner.

At the age of 16, Stahl was sent to a boarding prep school near Philadelphia. He attended Columbia University. Post-college he traveled, living in Greece—in caves outside of Matala, on Crete, the streets of Paris, then London, where he landed a job as a bartender at an Irish pub. He later returned to America to live in New York City, where he became a writer.

Will Christopher Baer is an American author of hardboiled fiction.

Anne Inez McCaffrey (1 April 1926 – 21 November 2011) was an American-Irish writer known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction (Best Novella, Weyr Search, 1968) and the first to win a Nebula Award (Best Novella, Dragonrider, 1969). Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science-fiction books to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.

In 2005 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey its 22nd Grand Master, an annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction. She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on 17 June 2006. She also received the Robert A. Heinlein Award for her work in 2007.

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.

He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely regarded as one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was a science fiction writer, an avid populariser of space travel, and a futurist of a distinguished ability. He wrote many books and many essays for popular magazines. In 1961, he received the Kalinga Prize, a UNESCO award for popularising science. Clarke's science and science-fiction writings earned him the moniker "Prophet of the Space Age". His science-fiction writings in particular earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, which along with a large readership, made him one of the towering figures of the genre. For many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high standing in pop culture, his books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published 64 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer and humorist known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death.