Novelists have used everything from real killers to newsworthy hostage situations to literal white whales to craft their fiction.

If you want to expand your horror reading beyond Stephen King, look no further than this list, which features everyone from Mariana Enriquez to Stephen Graham Jones and beyond.

Some, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Victor Hugo, believed they had communicated with spirits directly; others, like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Hardy, had ghostly encounters they couldn’t explain.

The novelist endured a crash in East Africa. Then his 'rescue' plane went down, too.

These offenses include everything from historical forgeries to audacious heists to cold-blooded murder—all with a bookish twist.

'The Canterbury Tales' author Geoffrey Chaucer's work spanned poetry and prose and ranged from the humorous to the scientific—but there's so much more to know about the "father of English poetry."

'Ten Little Rabbits: A Counting Story With Mino the Magician' was originally part of a museum fundraiser.

James Baldwin's novel 'Giovanni’s Room' was rejected by editors and publishers before it was eventually released in 1956.

If you’ve been pronouncing Roald Dahl’s first name as “rolled,” you should read this.

Robert Louis Stevenson ('Treasure Island,' 'Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde') is one of Scotland’s foremost writers—and his life, like his most famous stories, was full of both adventure and misfortune.

By the age of 34, Lorraine Hansberry was already the author of two plays that had appeared on Broadway. She should have been on course for a long and successful career—but tragically, that wouldn't happen. Still, her legacy has endured.

Provides an overview of Palau , including key events and facts about this tropical island nation in the northern Pacific.