Bernice M. Murphy is an Associate Professor and Lecturer in Popular Literature in the School of English, Trinity College, Dublin. She has published extensively on topics related to American Gothic and horror fiction and film and was recently academic consultant to The Letters of Shirley Jackson (2021, edited by Laurence Jackson Hyman). Bernice was made a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2017. 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).

• Introduction. ‘Changing the story’: Popular Fiction todayBernice M. Murphy and Stephen Matterson1. Larry McMurtry’s Vanishing BreedsStephen Matterson2. ‘Time to Open the Door’: Stephen King’s LegacyRebecca Janicker3. Terry Pratchett: Mostly HumanJim Shanahan4. From Westeros to HBO: George R.R. Martin and the Mainstreaming of Fantasy　Gerard Hynes5. Nora Roberts: The Power of LoveJarlath Killeen6. The King of Stories: Neil Gaiman’s Twenty-first Century Fiction Tara Prescott7. Jo Nesbø: Murder in the FolkhemmetClare Clarke8. ‘It’s a trap! Don’t turn the page.’ Metafiction and the Multiverse in the Comics of Grant MorrisonKate Roddy9. Panoptic and Synoptic Surveillance in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games SeriesKeith O’Sullivan10. E. L. James and the Fifty Shades of Grey PhenomenonDara Downey11. Fact, Fiction, Fabrication: The Popular Appeal of Dan Brown’s Global BestsellersIan Kinane12. ‘I Need to Disillusion You’: J.K. Rowling and Twenty-First-Century Young Adult FantasyKate Harvey13. Jodi Picoult: Good Grief Clare Hayes-Brady14. ‘We Will Have a Happy Marriage If It Kills Him’: Gillian Flynn and the Rise of Domestic Noir Bernice M. Murphy15. ‘The Bastard Zone’: China Miéville, Perdido Street Station and the New WeirdKirsten Tranter16. Sparkly Vampires and Shimmering Aliens: The Paranormal Romance of Stephanie MeyerHannah Priest17. ‘We needed to get a lot of white collars dirty’:　 The Apocalypse as Opportunity in Max Brooks’ World War Z. Bernice M. Murphy 18. Genre and Uncertainty in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad MysteriesBrian Cliff　 19. ‘You Get What You Ask For’: Hugh Howey, SF, and Authorial AgencyStephen Kenneally20. Cherie Priest: At the Intersection of History and TechnologyCatherine Siemann

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