Twenty-First-Century Popular Fiction

Provides a unique snapshot of themes and trends within popular fiction in the twenty-first century

This groundbreaking collection captures the state of popular fiction in present day. It features twenty new essays on key authors associated with a wide range of genres and sub-genres, providing chapter-length discussions of major post-2000 works of contemporary popular fiction. The lively, accessible and academically rigorous essays presented here cover a wider range of established popular fiction genres such as fantasy, horror and the romance, as well as more niche areas such as Domestic Noir, Steampunk, the New Weird, Nordic Noir and Zombie Lit. The collection will primarily appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students but general readers may also find the focus on many of today's most prominent and influential authors to be of interest.

Key Features

• Provides students with a timely and accessible overview of current trends within contemporary popular fiction
• Includes timely reassessments of recent fiction by established figures such as Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Larry McMurtry, Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling, Jodi Picoult, China Miéville, Grant Morrison, Terry Pratchett and Nora Roberts as well as consideration of authors who have emerged more recently, amongst them Stephenie Meyer, Gillian Flynn, E.L. James, Hugh Howey, Cherie Priest, and Max Brooks
• Includes supplementary material such recommended further reading at the end of each chapter

Bernice M. Murphy is Associate Professor/Lecturer in Popular Literature and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of Key Concepts in Contemporary Popular Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), The Highway Horror Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Stephen Matterson is Professor of American Literature in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, and a Fellow of the College. He has published widely on US literature, with emphasis on 20th-century poetry and literature of the mid-19th century. In addition to a series of co-edited collections of essays, his book publications include American Literature: The Essential Glossary (Bloomsbury, 2003), and Melville: Fashioning in Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2015).