Fiction Authors | OpenFiction

Joe Abercrombie

Joe Abercrombie is a British author best known for The First Law, a fantasy trilogy that arrived in 2006 with The Blade Itself and systematically dismantled the conventions of the genre it was working in. Where epic fantasy had long trafficked in heroes, destiny, and earned redemption, Abercrombie offered instead a world of compromised institutions, cyclical violence, and characters whose arcs arrive at destinations the narrative logic of their stories explicitly promises to avoid. The trilogy established him as a leading voice in what became known as grimdark fantasy, though his work is more precisely described as a sustained critique of fantasy's tendency toward moral comfort. He has returned to the same world across three standalone novels and the Age of Madness trilogy, deepening and complicating the setting with each addition. His prose is notably sharp, his dialogue among the best in contemporary genre fiction, and his plotting consistently subverts expectation without feeling arbitrary.

Jane Austen

1 book

Jane Austen was an English writer. Although Austen was widely read in her lifetime, she published her works anonymously. The most urgent preoccupations of her bright, young heroines are courtship and marriage. Austen herself never married. Her best-known books include Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1816). Virginia Woolf called Austen "the most perfect artist among women".

Iain M. Banks

1 series12 books

Iain Banks was a Scottish author who published fiction under two names that marked a clear generic distinction: as Iain Banks he wrote literary fiction, as Iain M. Banks he wrote science fiction, though the boundary between the two was always more porous than the naming convention suggested. His literary debut, The Wasp Factory in 1984, announced an immediately distinctive voice - dark, formally inventive, and entirely uninterested in reader comfort. The novels that followed ranged widely in tone and approach, from the sprawling generational drama of The Crow Road to the formally audacious The Bridge. As Iain M. Banks he created the Culture, a post-scarcity anarchist utopia administered by superintelligent artificial minds, against which he staged some of contemporary science fiction's most ambitious moral and political arguments. The Culture novels - among them Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, and Player of Games - are widely regarded as among the finest the genre has produced.

Leigh Bardugo

3 series10 books

Leigh Bardugo is an American author best known for the Grishaverse, a fantasy universe rooted in a richly imagined world drawing on Russian folklore and imperial aesthetics. Her debut novel Shadow and Bone introduced readers to Alina Starkov, an orphaned mapmaker who discovers a rare and powerful ability, and launched a series that has since expanded across multiple trilogies and standalone works. Her Six of Crows duology, set in the same universe but following a crew of criminals planning an impossible heist, is widely considered her finest work - a tightly plotted, character-driven story that broadened her readership significantly and demonstrated a range beyond her debut. Bardugo has continued to develop the Grishaverse with the King of Scars duology and has written outside it with Ninth House and its sequel Hell Bent, darker adult fiction set at Yale University among secret societies and the supernatural.

James S. A. Corey

1 series17 books

James S.A. Corey is the pen name of collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the writing team behind The Expanse series. Abraham is an established novelist in his own right, with work spanning epic fantasy and science fiction; Franck began his career as an assistant to George R.R. Martin. The two met through that connection and began developing what would become The Expanse together. The series began with Leviathan Wakes in 2011 and ran to nine novels, following humanity several centuries into the future as it has colonised the solar system and fractured politically along the lines of Earth, Mars, and the outer planets. Praised for its scientific rigour, morally complex characters, and political realism, it is widely regarded as one of the defining works of contemporary science fiction. A television adaptation ran for six seasons. Abraham and Franck have continued writing together under the Corey name with a new series, The Captive's War, beginning in 2025.

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Arthur Conan Doyle

2 series9 books

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British author and physician whose creation of Sherlock Holmes placed him among the most influential writers in the history of popular fiction. Born in Edinburgh in 1859, he trained as a doctor before turning to writing, drawing on his medical background to shape Holmes's famous method of deductive reasoning - itself modelled partly on the diagnostic techniques of his mentor Joseph Bell. The first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in 1887, and the character's popularity quickly outpaced everything else Doyle wrote. Doyle's own attitude to his most famous creation across the decades that followed was famously complicated, and the long publication history of the Holmes stories from 1887 through 1927 reflects considerably more authorial reluctance and reconsideration than most of his readers ever quite realised. Outside Holmes, Doyle wrote historical novels, science fiction including the Professor Challenger series, and was a prominent public figure with strong interests in spiritualism in his later years.

Steven Erikson

1 series10 books

Steven Erikson is the pen name of Steve Rune Lundin, a Canadian author and archaeologist born on 7 October 1959 in Toronto, Ontario. His background in archaeology and anthropology shapes the Malazan world at every level - the series approaches its fictional civilisations with the detachment of a field researcher cataloguing a dig, interested in systems and structures as much as individuals. Erikson studied at the University of Victoria and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and worked as an archaeologist before turning to fiction full time. The Malazan Book of the Fallen began as a role-playing game world developed with Ian Cameron Esslemont in the 1980s, eventually growing into one of the most ambitious projects in epic fantasy. Gardens of the Moon was completed in the late 1980s but rejected by publishers for over a decade before finally appearing in 1999. The series concluded with The Crippled God in 2011. Erikson has since published the Kharkanas Trilogy, a prequel sequence set in the Malazan world's distant past, as well as the Witness trilogy continuing the main sequence storyline.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

1 book

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the Twenties. He finished four novels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night and his most famous, the celebrated classic, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.

William Gibson

1 series4 books

William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian writer who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story Burning Chrome and later popularized the concept in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984). In envisaging cyberspace, Gibson created an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. He is also credited with predicting the rise of reality television and with establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as video games and the Web.

Frank Herbert

1 series6 books

Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. (October 8, 1920 - February 11, 1986) was an American science-fiction author, best known for his 1965 novel Dune and its five sequels. He also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, photographer, book reviewer, ecological consultant, and lecturer. Dune is the best-selling science fiction novel of all time, and the series is a classic of the science-fiction genre. The series has been adapted numerous times, including the feature film David Lynch's Dune (1984), the miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune (2000) and Children of Dune (2003), and a motion picture trilogy currently in production, with Denis Villeneuve's Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024) having been released.

Robin Hobb

5 series17 books

Robin Hobb is the pen name of American author Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, who also publishes fantasy fiction under the name Megan Lindholm. Born in California in 1952 and raised in Alaska and Washington State, she began publishing as Megan Lindholm in the 1980s before adopting the Robin Hobb name for the Farseer Trilogy in 1995. The two names represent genuinely distinct bodies of work rather than a simple rebranding - the Lindholm novels are smaller in scale and more intimate, while the Hobb novels are characterised by their emotional intensity, long-form character development, and willingness to subject protagonists to sustained suffering. The Realm of the Elderlings sequence, published across three decades, is widely regarded as one of the finest achievements in contemporary epic fantasy for the depth of its characterisation and the uncompromising honesty of its emotional register.

Rik Hoskin

1 book

British comic book writer and adapter, known for translating prose fiction into graphic novel scripts. His adaptation credits include Brandon Sanderson's White Sand trilogy and work for publishers including Marvel, Dark Horse, and Titan Comics.

Robert Jordan

1 series15 books

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Jordan developed a passion for storytelling and served two tours in Vietnam before pursuing a writing career in 1977. Jordan is best known for The Wheel of Time, a sprawling fantasy saga that combines intricate world-building, complex characters, and a richly detailed magic system. The series spans fourteen books and a prequel novel, with the first volume, The Eye of the World, published in 1990. The narrative explores themes of prophecy, destiny, and the struggle between good and evil, set in a meticulously crafted world with its own history, cultures, and languages. After Jordan's passing in 2007, fellow fantasy author Brandon Sanderson]was chosen to complete the series using Jordan's extensive notes and outlines. The final three books were published between 2009 and 2013, bringing the epic saga to a conclusion. Jordan was one of several writers who contributed to the Conan the Barbarian series, with his works considered among the best by fans. He wrote seven Conan novels, and compiled a well-known Conan Chronology. In addition to his fantasy writing, Jordan used various pseudonyms for different genres: Reagan O'Neal for historical novels set during the American Revolution, Jackson O'Reilly for a western novel, and Chang Lung for his dance and theater criticism. Jordan's ability to create immersive worlds and compelling characters has earned him a dedicated fan base and numerous accolades. His work on The Wheel of Time series has sold over 90 million copies worldwide and was adapted into a television series by Amazon Prime Video in 2021.

Paul Kidby

6 books

Paul Kidby is a British illustrator best known for his long association with Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, for which he became the definitive visual interpreter following the death of the original cover artist Josh Kirby in 2001. Where Kirby's work was busy, carnivalesque, and deliberately chaotic, Kidby brought a warmer and more character-focused approach, his portraits of Discworld's inhabitants combining affection with precision. His collaboration with Pratchett extended beyond cover illustration to include several standalone art books - The Art of Discworld and The Compleat Ankh-Morpork among them - as well as the illustrated editions of individual novels. His rendering of Death, Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, and the wider cast has become the canonical visual reference for most readers. Kidby also contributed illustrations to The Last Hero, a Discworld graphic novel written by Pratchett, which remains one of the more complete expressions of their collaboration.

Stephen King

1 series8 books

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. 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 63 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. King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire bibliography, such as the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2015, he was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature. He has been described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high standing in pop culture.

Stieg Larsson

1 series3 books

Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist and author who spent his career investigating far-right extremism and exposing neo-Nazi networks in Sweden. He founded and edited the magazine Expo, which monitored extremist groups, and was a leading authority on far-right movements in Europe. Larsson wrote the Millennium trilogy - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest - in his spare time, reportedly to relax. He submitted all three manuscripts to his publisher shortly before his death from a heart attack in November 2004, aged 50, never knowing the global phenomenon he had created. The trilogy was published posthumously between 2005 and 2007, selling over 100 million copies worldwide. Lisbeth Salander became one of the most iconic characters in contemporary crime fiction. The series has been adapted twice for film and once for television.

Scott Lynch

1 series3 books

Scott Lynch (born April 2, 1978) is an American fantasy author, best known for the Gentleman Bastard Sequence series of novels. His first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, was purchased by Orion Books in August 2004 and published in June 2006 under the Gollancz imprint in the United Kingdom and under the Bantam imprint in the United States. The next two novels in the series, Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves, were published in 2007 and 2013, respectively. The planned fourth of seven books in the series will be The Thorn of Emberlain.

George R. R. Martin

1 series5 books

George Raymond Richard Martin is best known as the author of the epic fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, which was adapted by HBO into the Primetime Emmy Award - winning television series Game of Thrones (2011 - 2019) and its prequel series House of the Dragon (2022 - present). Martin also wrote a related series of novellas, Tales of Dunk and Egg, which have been adapted by HBO as A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2026 - present). Outside of A Song of Ice and Fire and its related media, Martin helped create the Wild Cards anthology series and contributed worldbuilding for the video game Elden Ring (2022).

Cormac McCarthy

1 series10 books

Cormac McCarthy was an American author widely regarded as one of the most significant prose stylists in the history of American literature. His work spans Appalachian gothic, Western, and post-apocalyptic fiction, united by a preoccupation with violence, fate, and the moral landscape of a continent shaped by conquest and loss. His early Appalachian novels, including Outer Dark and Child of God, established a voice of stark biblical cadence that owed something to Faulkner while being entirely his own. Blood Meridian, published in 1985, is by many accounts his masterpiece - an account of historical violence on the Texas-Mexico border of extraordinary formal ambition and unflinching brutality, and one of the most debated novels in the American canon. The Border Trilogy brought him wider readership, and No Country for Old Men and The Road extended his reach further still, both adapted successfully for film. His prose is distinctive for its minimal punctuation, long rhythmic sentences, and refusal of consolation.

Terry Pratchett

6 series41 books

Sir Terence David John Pratchett, OBE more commonly known as Terry Pratchett, was an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best-known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels. Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971, and since his first Discworld novel (The Colour of Magic) was published in 1983, he has written two books a year on average. Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s, and as of December 2007 had sold more than 55 million books worldwide, with translations made into 36 languages. He is currently the second most-read writer in the UK, and seventh most-read non-US author in the US. In 2001 he won the Carnegie Medal for his young adult novel The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.

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Authors

Joe Abercrombie

Jane Austen

Iain M. Banks

Leigh Bardugo

James S. A. Corey

Arthur Conan Doyle

Steven Erikson

F. Scott Fitzgerald

William Gibson

Frank Herbert

Robin Hobb

Rik Hoskin

Robert Jordan

Paul Kidby

Stephen King

Stieg Larsson

Scott Lynch

George R. R. Martin

Cormac McCarthy

Terry Pratchett

Joe Abercrombie

Jane Austen

Iain M. Banks

Leigh Bardugo

James S. A. Corey

Arthur Conan Doyle

Steven Erikson

F. Scott Fitzgerald

William Gibson

Frank Herbert

Robin Hobb

Rik Hoskin

Robert Jordan

Paul Kidby

Stephen King

Stieg Larsson

Scott Lynch

George R. R. Martin

Cormac McCarthy

Terry Pratchett