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Howard Fast, one of the most prolific American writers of the 20th century, has enjoyed wide popularity for his writing and suffered from great notoriety for his politics, but has never been given full credit for his contribution to the essential tales of American culture, the American Revolution, and immigrant acculturation.

Although best known for The Thorn Birds, her blockbuster family saga set in her native Australia, Colleen McCullough is a versatile novelist who has written in a variety of genres.

Part II, The Kent Family Chronicles, devotes an individual chapter to each of the novels in this series, The Bastard, The Rebels, The Seekers, The Furies, The Titans, The Warriors, The Lawless, and The Americans.

In a career writing fiction that spans more than 40 years, James A. Michener has refined the art of telling an engrossing story while presenting massive amounts of factual information. His narratives are characterized by an acute sense of place and important themes such as human tolerance, the relationship between human beings and their environment, and the value of human courage and hard work. This study is the first to assess and analyze his fictional work in more than ten years and discusses his recent fiction, as well as his important historical fiction. The work features a biographical chapter, an overview of his fictional works, and close, critical readings of nine of his most noted novels which will be of special interest to students of American history.An opening chapter discusses his life, including his childhood, education, travels, and the path that led him to become a premier storyteller. The overview chapter examines the characteristics of his fiction and general thematic concerns and offers brief consideration of the novels not analyzed in indivual chapters. The remaining eight chapters focus on individual novels: The Fires of Spring, Hawaii, Centennial, Chesapeake, The Covenant, Space, Texas, Alaska, and Miracle in Seville. Each novel is analyzed for plot structure, characterization, and thematic elements. In addition, Severson defines and applies alternative critical perspectives from which to read the novel. A complete, up-to-date bibliography of Michener's fiction and bibliography of reviews and criticism complete the work. This up-to-date critique of Michener's work will supercede the out-of-date works on the public library shelf and will support the secondary school interdisciplinary American history/literature curriculum.

The study includes never-before-published biographical information, drawing an original interview with John Saul, and a chapter on the history of tales of horror and the supernatural and how these genres have influenced Saul's fiction. Each chapter in this study examines an individual novel.

Like Arthur Conan Doyle before him, best-selling novelist Robin Cook has turned from the practice of medicine to that of writing popular suspense fiction.

Baker and Gibson show that while Vidal's novels are tremendously entertaining, they are also serious examinations of a recurring theme-the decline of the West in general and the decline of the United States in particular. A biographical sketch of the writer precedes a general discussion of Vidal's early novels.

Beginning with "Eye of the Needle" in 1978, Ken Follett has pursued a successful and varied fiction-writing career. This study of his work looks at Follett's experimentation with genre, and includes individual examinations of each of his major novels, up to and including "A Place Called Freedom".