By: Devin McKinney

Vlad the Impaler was happy to play the role of an absent God.

By: Robert Wringham

He wrote a funny, angry portrait of working-class life.

By: Tom Nealon

He locates the key to our humanity within the permutations of our weirdness.

By: Suzanne Fischer

Her theme was the wobble in the heart of the universe.

By: Anthony Miller

He hated middlebrow and appreciated madness.

By: Robert Wringham

His boarding-school girls smoked, gambled and even murdered.

By: Joshua Glenn

The best adventure novels from 1964 — 50 years ago.

By: Brian Berger

He fought against “the little men of War and Bias.”

By: Suzanne Fischer

Science fiction inspired her to an incisive, productive anger.

By: William Nericcio

She clawed a fiction out of the very soul of the Americas.

By: Anthony Miller

He mixed total irreverence with profound compassion.

By: Tor Aarestad

Topped with dark humor, his social messages went down easily.

By: Joshua Glenn

The 12 books that inaugurated a great era in kids’ lit.

By: Anthony Miller

He tested limits, courted demons, and thrashed it all out on the page.

By: Devin McKinney

The tubercular cousin in our family of vigorous visionaries.