Authors
Start with an author guide — where to begin with each writer and how their books connect — or browse every author A–Z below.
Author Guides
Agatha Christie
English crime writer (1890–1976) who created Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and wrote 66 detective novels and the play The Mousetrap.
Mystery · Thriller
Brandon Sanderson
American fantasy author (born 1975) of Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive who also completed Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time.
Fantasy · Sci-Fi
C.S. Lewis
Belfast-born scholar and writer (1898–1963) best known for The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity.
Fantasy · Children's
Colleen Hoover
Texas novelist who self-published Slammed in 2012 and became a bestseller with It Ends with Us, Verity and It Starts with Us.
Romance · Fiction
Dan Brown
American thriller writer whose Robert Langdon novels, including The Da Vinci Code, combine codes, art history and conspiracy theories.
Thriller · Mystery
Delia Owens
American zoologist who studied wildlife in Botswana and Zambia, co-wrote three nonfiction books, then published Where the Crawdads Sing in 2018.
Fiction · Mystery
Donna Tartt
Mississippi-born novelist whose three books, The Secret History, The Little Friend and the Pulitzer-winning The Goldfinch, each took about a decade.
Fiction · Literary
Emily Henry
American romance novelist behind Beach Read, People We Meet on Vacation and Book Lovers, who began in young adult fiction.
Romance · Fiction
Ernest Hemingway
American novelist and 1954 Nobel laureate (1899–1961) known for The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea.
Literary · Fiction
F. Scott Fitzgerald
American writer (1896–1940) of the Jazz Age whose novels include The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, plus 164 short stories.
Literary · Fiction
Frank Herbert
American science fiction writer (1920–1986) whose Dune won the first Nebula Award for Best Novel and was followed by five sequels.
Sci-Fi
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian novelist (1821–1881) of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov.
Literary · Classics
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Colombian novelist and 1982 Nobel laureate (1927–2014) who popularized magic realism with One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Literary · Magical Realism
George Orwell
English writer Eric Blair (1903–1950), known as George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four and essays on politics and language.
Dystopian · Fiction
George R.R. Martin
American author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the fantasy series adapted as HBO's Game of Thrones, and editor of the Wild Cards books.
Fantasy
Gillian Flynn
American novelist and screenwriter known for three psychological thrillers: Sharp Objects (2006), Dark Places (2009) and Gone Girl (2012).
Thriller · Mystery
Harper Lee
Alabama novelist whose To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) won the Pulitzer Prize; an earlier draft was published as Go Set a Watchman in 2015.
Literary · Fiction
Isaac Asimov
American science fiction writer and biochemist, author of the Foundation and Robot series, who wrote or edited more than 500 books.
Sci-Fi
J.K. Rowling
British author of the seven Harry Potter novels (1997–2007), who also writes the Cormoran Strike detective series as Robert Galbraith.
Fantasy · Children's
J.R.R. Tolkien
English philologist and Oxford professor whose The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) are set in his invented Middle-earth.
Fantasy
James Dashner
American author of The Maze Runner (2009), its sequels and prequels, and the young adult fantasy series The 13th Reality.
Sci-Fi · YA
James Patterson
American thriller writer and creator of detective Alex Cross, whose series and co-written novels have sold more than 425 million copies.
Thriller · Mystery
Jane Austen
English novelist (1775–1817) whose six novels, from Sense and Sensibility to Persuasion, turn on money, marriage and status among the gentry.
Romance · Classics
John Green
American author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, and co-creator with his brother Hank of Vlogbrothers and Crash Course.
YA · Fiction
John Grisham
Former Mississippi lawyer and legislator whose legal thrillers, starting with A Time to Kill (1989) and The Firm (1991), have sold 300 million copies.
Thriller · Legal
Kazuo Ishiguro
Japanese-British novelist who won the 1989 Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day and the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Literary · Fiction
Ken Follett
Welsh author of spy thrillers such as Eye of the Needle and of the Kingsbridge historical novels that began with The Pillars of the Earth.
Historical · Thriller
Leo Tolstoy
Russian novelist (1828–1910), author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, whose later writing on nonviolence influenced Gandhi and King.
Literary · Classics
Margaret Atwood
Canadian novelist and poet, author of The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and of two Booker Prize winners, The Blind Assassin and The Testaments.
Dystopian · Literary
Mark Twain
American humorist Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as Mark Twain.
Literary · Classics
Michael Crichton
American author (1942–2008) of science-driven thrillers such as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, and creator of the TV series ER.
Sci-Fi · Thriller
Neil Gaiman
English writer of The Sandman comics and novels including American Gods, Coraline, Neverwhere and The Graveyard Book.
Fantasy · Horror
Nora Roberts
American author of more than 225 novels: romance and suspense as Nora Roberts, and the futuristic In Death police procedurals as J.D. Robb.
Romance
Paulo Coelho
Brazilian novelist and former songwriter whose 1988 novel The Alchemist became an international bestseller.
Fiction · Philosophy
Ray Bradbury
American writer (1920–2012) of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and story collections spanning science fiction, fantasy and horror.
Sci-Fi · Fiction
Rebecca Yarros
American author of the Empyrean dragon-rider fantasy series (Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, Onyx Storm) and earlier romance novels.
Fantasy · Romance
Rick Riordan
American author of Percy Jackson & the Olympians and its spin-offs, which drop Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Norse gods into modern America.
Fantasy · YA
Robert Jordan
Pen name of James Oliver Rigney Jr. (1948–2007), creator of The Wheel of Time, the epic fantasy series completed by Brandon Sanderson.
Fantasy
Sarah J. Maas
American fantasy author of Throne of Glass, A Court of Thorns and Roses and Crescent City, with more than 75 million copies sold as of 2024.
Fantasy · Romance
Stephen King
American author, born 1947, known for horror from Carrie (1974) and The Shining (1977) to It (1986), plus the Dark Tower series.
Horror · Thriller
Suzanne Collins
American author and former children's TV writer who created The Hunger Games and the Underland Chronicles.
Dystopian · YA
Toni Morrison
American novelist and editor (1931–2019) who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature; author of Beloved, Song of Solomon and Sula.
Literary · Fiction
Ursula K. Le Guin
American author (1929–2018) of the Earthsea fantasy books and Hainish science fiction, including The Left Hand of Darkness.
Sci-Fi · Fantasy
Veronica Roth
American author, born 1988, whose Divergent trilogy, begun while she was a Northwestern student, has sold more than 35 million copies.
Dystopian · YA
Victor Hugo
French Romantic novelist, poet and playwright (1802–1885), author of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables.
Literary · Classics