H.P. Lovecraft was a writer who toiled away in his own life in relative obscurity, writing horror and science fiction pieces for small magazines. After his death in 1937, however, Lovecraft's stories, which featured otherworldly scenarios, horrible creatures, and threats to humanity, gained a larger popularity. In modern times, Lovecraft is seen as one of the foremost science fiction and horror authors.

All Quiet on the Western Front, written by the German writer Erich Maria Remarque, shares many similarities with some of Ernest Hemingway's novels, as it is set during World War I and based on the author's experiences. However, Hemingway's distinctive style, modernist narrative structure, terse language, and glorification of machismo are almost polar opposites to Remarque's style.

Bernard Malamud's 1952novel The Natural appears on its surface to be a straightforward novel about a talented baseball player who attempts a comeback after he was shot on the verge of his major league breakthrough at the age of nineteen. The novel, though, deals with themes of morality, mythology, and celebrity. The novel is one of the author's most famous, and was made into a successful film.

Jack London is known primarily for his adventure novels and short stories, many of which took place in Alaska. All of the remaining authors, except Mark Twain, wrote during the 20th century. Twain is an American 19th century author known for his satirical stories such as Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The only author on the list who is not American is British author T.S. Eliot, best known for The Once and Future King. Edward Albee is an American playwright whose works include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? F. Scott Fitzgerald is best known for The Great Gatsby.

Vladimir Nabokov was born in Russia in 1899, but became a famous author after moving to Western Europe and writing in English and French as well as Russian. A master prose stylist in three languages, Nabokov's books had innovative structures or unusual topics, like 1955's Lolita, about a pedophile; 1957's Pnin, about a Russian professor at an American college; and 1962's Pale Fire, about a poem by the same name as the book's title.

Edith Wharton was one of the premier novelists of the early twentieth century, whose incisive and witty novels described and poked fun at upper class manners. Her 1911 novel Ethan Frome details the inner desires of a prominent New England farmer. Wharton's 1920 novel The Age of Innocence mocks New York's high society, and made Wharton the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Philip Roth's career spanned the full second half of the twentieth century, and won him numerous awards. Roth's particular style, full of humor, reflections on Jewish life in America, and autobiographical inspiration, singled him out and made him one of America's most successful and critically acclaimed authors. While similar to Roth, John Updike, who wrote Rabbit, Run, found his inspiration in his own Pennsylvanian, Protestant upbringing.

Although Flannery O'Connor wrote two novels, she was most famous for her short stories, which were first collected in the volume A Good Man is Hard to Find, published in 1955. The stories in the collection featured many of O'Connor's hallmarks, including grotesque characters, allegorical tales, depictions of societal issues, Southern locations, and shocking plot turns. O'Connor's other collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge, was published in 1965 after her death.

Philip Roth is one of the most important American authors of the twentieth century. Roth's style is notable for using absurd and outlandish humor in stories that often comment on the Jewish experience in America. Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) is an inversion on the coming of age novel; The Great American Novel (1973) is a story about a baseball league that comments on American politics; and Zuckerman Unbound (1981) is a roman à clef that features an author who is very much like Roth.

James Joyce stands as one of the leading modernist writers, creating stream-of-conscious novels that tell mundane stories in inventive ways. Joyce's most famous work is Ulysses, published fully in 1922. The story covers one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, while making comparisons to the Greek epic The Odyssey with a variety of verbal and literary flourishes.