David J. Skal

David J. Skal became fascinated with monsters at the height of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when indestructible monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man provided a "nuclear security blanket" for a whole generation of youngsters.

Active as an editor and reporter on his high school newspaper, he was granted a journalism scholarship to Ohio University, Athens, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1974. His work as film critic, arts reporter, arts editor and assistant managing editor of the Ohio University Post, one of the country's leading college papers,led to his three-season appointment as publicity director of the University-operated Monomoy Theatre on Cape Cod. Following his graduation, he served as a public affairs intern

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Ian Hunter

Ian Hunter Patterson (better known as Ian Hunter) is an English singer-songwriter who is best known as the lead singer of the English rock band Mott the Hoople.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hun...

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a ne
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Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and Joh
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Bram Stoker

Irish-born Abraham Stoker, known as Bram, of Britain wrote the gothic horror novel Dracula (1897).

The feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornely Stoker at 15 Marino crescent, then as now called "the crescent," in Fairview, a coastal suburb of Dublin, Ireland, bore this third of seven children. The parents, members of church of Ireland, attended the parish church of Saint John the Baptist, located on Seafield road west in Clontarf with their baptized children.

Stoker, an invalid, started school at the age of seven years in 1854, when he made a complete and astounding recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their
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Poppy Z. Brite

Poppy Z. Brite (born Melissa Ann Brite, now going by Billy Martin) is an American author born in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Born a biological female, Brite has written and talked much about his gender dysphoria/gender identity issues. He self-identifies almost completely as a homosexual male rather than female, and as of 2011 has started taking testosterone injections. His male name is Billy Martin.

He lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia prior to returning to New Orleans in 1993. He loves UNC basketball and is a sometime season ticket holder for the NBA, but he saves his greatest affection for his hometown football team, the New Orleans Saints.

Brite and husband Chris DeBarr, a chef, run a de facto cat rescue and have, at any
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Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley. Following a distinguished career at a private nursery school--he was almost immediately expelled--he attended public schools and the Cambridge School of Weston. Notable events in his early life included the loss of a fingertip at the age of three to a bicycle; the loss of his two front teeth to his brother Richard's fist; and various broken bones, also incurred in dust-ups with Richard. (Richard went on to write The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, which tells you all you need to know about what it was like to grow up with him as a brother.)

As they grew up, Doug, Richard, and their little brother David roamed the quiet suburbs o
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Richard Stark

A pseudonym used by Donald E. Westlake.
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R.L. Stine

Robert Lawrence Stine known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series.

R. L. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. His other
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John William Polidori

John William Polidori was an Italian English physician and writer, known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction.

Polidori was the oldest son of Gaetano Polidori, an Italian political émigré scholar, and Anna Maria Pierce, a governess. He had three brothers and four sisters.

He was one of the earliest pupils at recently established Ampleforth College from 1804, and in 1810 went up to the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote a thesis on sleepwalking and received his degree as a doctor of medicine on 1 August 1815 at the age of 19.

In 1816 Dr. Polidori entered Lord Byron's service as his personal physician, and accompanied Byron on a trip through Europe. At th
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Mike Ashley

Michael Raymond Donald Ashley is the author and editor of over sixty books that in total have sold over a million copies worldwide. He lives in Chatham, Kent.
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Ray Faraday Nelson

Aka Jeffrey Lord (house pseudonym)

Radell Faraday "Ray" Nelson is an American science fiction author and cartoonist most famous for his 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", which was later used by John Carpenter as the basis for his 1988 film They Live.
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Lesley Pratt Bannatyne

Lesley Bannatyne is an American author who writes extensively on Halloween, especially its history, literature, and contemporary celebration. She also writes short stories, many of which are included in her debut collection _Unaccustomed to Grace_, out from Kallisto Gaia Press in March, 2022. iN 2024, her Lake Song. A Novel in Stories won the Grace Paley Prize and is published by Mad Creek Books in September 2025.

Bannatyne has shared her knowledge on television specials for the History Channel ("The Haunted History of Halloween," "The Real Story of Halloween"), with Time Magazine, Slate, National Geographic, and contributed the Halloween article to World Book Encyclopedia. Her Halloween books range from a children's book, Witches Night Befo
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Aerosmith

Aerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "the Bad Boys from Boston"and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band."
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Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author thirty-five or so books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in.
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Michael Bronski

Michael Bronski has written extensively on LGBT issues for four decades. He has published widely in the LGBT and mainstream press and his work appears in numerous anthologies. He is a Senior Lecturer in Women’s and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College.
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Lisa Morton

Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of horror fiction, and Halloween expert. She is a winner of both the Black Quill and Bram Stoker Awards, and her short stories have appeared in more than 50 books and magazines. Her first novel, THE CASTLE OF LOS ANGELES, was released by Gray Friar Press in 2010, and her first collection, MONSTERS OF L.A., was published by Bad Moon Books in October 2011. She is a native and lifelong resident of Southern California, and currently resides in the San Fernando Valley.
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Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix is the author of the novels Horrorstör, about a haunted IKEA, and My Best Friend's Exorcism, which is like Beaches meets The Exorcist, only it's set in the Eighties. He's also the author of We Sold Our Souls, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, and the upcoming (July 13!) Final Girl Support Group!

He's also the jerk behind the Stoker award-winning Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the 70's and 80's horror paperback boom, which contains more information about Nazi leprechauns, killer babies, and evil cats than you probably need.

And he's the screenwriter behind Mohawk, which is probably the only horror movie about the War of 1812 and Satanic Panic.

You can listen to free, amazing, and did I mention free podcasts
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John Kelly

John Kelly specializes in narrative history. He is the author of The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People; The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death; The Most Devastating Plague of all Time; Three on the Edge; and more. Kelly lives in New York City and Sandisfield, Massachusetts.
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Lol Tolhurst

Lol Tolhurst is an Author, musician
and performer.

He is best known as a founding member of the band that virtually invented alternative music, The Cure. Formed in 1976, The Cure is one of the most influential, successful and critically acclaimed bands of its generation.

As The Cure’s drummer, Lol toured the globe many times over, supporting the ground-breaking albums Three Imaginary Boys, Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography. He took on keyboard duties in the mid-eighties until his departure from the band in 1989, at the time of their masterwork Disintegration.

In the early nineties, Lol relocated to Southern California where he continues to write, record and tour with his own band, Levinhurst.

More recently, 2011 saw a momentous reunion
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Megan Rosenbloom

Megan Curran Rosenbloom is a librarian at UCLA Library in Los Angeles. Megan has a keen interest in the history of medicine and rare books. She was first President of the Southern California Society for the History of Medicine and co-founder and director of Death Salon, the event arm of The Order of the Good Death, and a formative leader in the Death Positive movement. She started the independent research team called The Anthropodermic Book Project to find the historic and scientific truths behind the world’s alleged books bound in human skin, or anthropodermic bibliopegy, and has a non-fiction book about the history and ethical implications of this practice, titled Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of
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S.A. Barnes

S.A. BARNES works in a high school library by day, recommending reads, talking with students, and removing the occasional forgotten cheese stick as bookmark. Barnes has published numerous novels across different genres under the pen name Stacey Kade. She lives in Illinois with more dogs and books than is advisable and a very patient husband.
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Brian McAuley

Brian McAuley’s debut novel Curse of the Reaper was named one of the Best Horror Books of 2022 by Esquire. His holiday slasher novella Candy Cain Kills earned praise from Booklist, Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews. The sequel Candy Cain Kills Again: The Second Slaying will be published in Winter 2024. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Dark Matter, Nightmare, Shortwave, and Monstrous Magazines. Brian is also a WGA screenwriter who has written everything from family sitcoms (Fuller House) to psychological thriller films (Dismissed). He teaches as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at ASU’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School. Connect with him on social media @BrianMcWriter
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Michael Mallory

Michael Mallory is an internationally-recognized authority on the subjects of film, animation and 20th century pop-culture, and the author of sixteen nonfiction books, which include The Art of Krampus, Essential Horror Movies, and Marvel: The Characters and their Universe. With the legendary American animation artist Iwao Takamoto he co-authored the memoirs Iwao Takamoto: My Life With a Thousand Characters, and has written more than 600 magazine and newspaper articles that have been published worldwide. A former newscaster, occasional actor, and frequent public speaker, Mike lives and works in the greater Los Angeles area.
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Charles Dennis

Actor, playwright, radio actor, journalist, author, director and screenwriter. B. A. from U. of Toronto
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Sloan De Forest

Sloan De Forest is a writer, actor, and film historian who has written about film for Sony, Time Warner Cable, the Mary Pickford Foundation, and Bright Lights Film Journal. She has contributed essays to the books Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life and Grace Kelly: Hollywood Dream Girl. She lives in Hollywood—mentally, spiritually, and geographically.
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Aerosmith

Aerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "the Bad Boys from Boston"and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band."
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Jim Tully

Jim Tully was an American vagabond, pugilist, and writer. He enjoyed critical and commercial success as a writer in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Lesley Pratt Bannatyne

Lesley Bannatyne is an American author who writes extensively on Halloween, especially its history, literature, and contemporary celebration. She also writes short stories, many of which are included in her debut collection _Unaccustomed to Grace_, out from Kallisto Gaia Press in March, 2022. iN 2024, her Lake Song. A Novel in Stories won the Grace Paley Prize and is published by Mad Creek Books in September 2025.

Bannatyne has shared her knowledge on television specials for the History Channel ("The Haunted History of Halloween," "The Real Story of Halloween"), with Time Magazine, Slate, National Geographic, and contributed the Halloween article to World Book Encyclopedia. Her Halloween books range from a children's book, Witches Night Befo
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Eve Golden

Eve Golden is a biographer whose work focuses on American silent film, theater and early twentieth century actresses.
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John Landis

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

John David Landis is an American comedy filmmaker and actor.
(source: Wikipedia)
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Nicholas Rogers

For the archivist and medieval historian, see Nicholas J. Rogers

Nicholas Rogers is Professor of History at York University, Toronto, Canada. He is the co-author of Eighteenth-Century English Society: Shuttles and Swords (OUP) and the author of Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain (OUP), for which he received the 1999 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association for the best book on non-Canadian history.
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Bridget Asher

Julianna Baggott
aka
Bridget Asher & N.E. Bode

Borned on 30 September 1969, she teaches at Florida State University. She's married to David G.W. Scott and has four kids. Along with her husband, she is a co-founder of the nonprofit organization Kids in Need - Books in Deed., getting free books to underprivileged kids in Florida.

Today, she is a critically acclaimed and bestselling author, who wrote novels and poetry, and who has over fifty overseas editions of her books. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Best American Poetry, Best Creative Nonfiction, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, and Here & Now. For two years, her alter-ego, N. E. Bode was a recurring personality on XM Radio. Her work
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