Blurb:
This groundbreaking collection captures the state of popular fiction in present day. It features twenty new essays on key authors associated with a wide range of genres and sub-genres, providing chapter-length discussions of major post-2000 works of contemporary popular fiction. The lively, accessible and academically rigorous essays presented here cover a wider range of established popular fiction genres such as fantasy, horror and the romance, as well as more niche areas such as Domestic Noir, Steampunk, the New Weird, Nordic Noir and Zombie Lit. The collection will primarily appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students but general readers may also find the focus on many of today’s most prominent and influential authors to be of interest.
Contents:
- Introduction: ‘Changing the story’: Popular Fiction Today
Bernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson
- Larry McMurtry’s Vanishing Breeds
Stephen Matterson
- ‘Time to Open the Door’: Stephen King’s Legacy
Rebecca Janicker
- Terry Pratchett: Mostly Human
Jim Shanahan
- From Westeros to HBO: George R.R. Martin and the Mainstreaming of Fantasy
Gerard Hynes
- Nora Roberts: The Power of Love
Jarlath Killeen
- The King of Stories: Neil Gaiman’s Twenty-first Century Fiction
Tara Prescott
- Jo Nesbø: Murder in the Folkhemmet
Clare Clarke
- ‘It’s a trap! Don’t turn the page.’ Metafiction and the Multiverse in the Comics of Grant Morrison
Kate Roddy
- Panoptic and Synoptic Surveillance in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Series
Keith O’Sullivan
- E.L. James and the Fifty Shades of Grey Phenomenon
Dara Downey
- Fact, Fiction, Fabrication: The Popular Appeal of Dan Brown’s Global Bestsellers
Ian Kinane
- ‘I Need to Disillusion You’: J.K. Rowling and Twenty-First-Century Young Adult Fantasy
Kate Harvey
- Jodi Picoult: Good Grief
Clare Hayes-Brady
- ‘We Will Have a Happy Marriage If It Kills Him’: Gillian Flynn and the Rise of Domestic Noir
Bernice M. Murphy
- ‘The Bastard Zone’: China Miéville, Perdido Street Station and the New Weird
Kirsten Tranter
- Sparkly Vampires and Shimmering Aliens: The Paranormal Romance of Stephanie Meyer
Hannah Priest
- ‘We needed to get a lot of white collars dirty’: The Apocalypse as Opportunity in Max Brooks’ World War Z
Bernice M. Murphy
- Genre and Uncertainty in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad Mysteries
Brian Cliff
- ‘You Get What You Ask For’: Hugh Howey, SF, and Authorial Agency
Stephen Kenneally
- Cherie Priest: At the Intersection of History and Technology
Catherine Siemann
For more information, or to buy a copy, please see the publisher's website.
