It is a story as fascinating as anything in one of Patrick O'Brian's much-acclaimed nautical adventures. Who was the man himself? Those who have avidly consumed such superb novels as Master and Commander and Treason's Harbour will find Dean King's Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed not only an authoritative guide to his work, but a tale of intrigue quite as beguiling as anything in the master's oeuvre. Initially commissioned as a modern-day successor to CS Forester (with a brief to inaugurate a series to rival the Hornblower books), O'Brian's chronicles of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars steadily grew into a saga far richer and more ambitious than its inspiration, and the author became a source of intense interest. O'Brian, though, was highly secretive (his editor warned "Patrick will make you feel odious and wormlike if you look into his private life"), and the terse version of his CV that he produced for public consumption intrigued King (an established authority on nautical literature and history, as well as on O'Brian himself), and he began to dig beneath the carefully constructed public persona. What he found went far beyond such discoveries as the fact that O'Brian was not Irish (as most readers believed) and that his career had taken a considerably different trajectory from that he had presented his interviewers with. And just how much of the author was in his heroes?

It's surprising that this is the first biography of this enigmatic talent—and as well as King's assiduous piercing of O'Brian's mysteries, this is a superlative celebration of one of the most amazing bodies of fiction produced in the 20th century. Again and again, King performs the key function of a literary biographer: he inspires in the reader an intense desire to return to his subject's work, armed with a host of new insights. King is particularly acute on the development of such characters as Captain Jack Aubrey (one of the most complex creations in all adventure fiction), and the illumination of how much of the author may be found in his most celebrated creations is one of the key pleasures of the book. Most of all, though, it's the communication of the biographer's enthusiasm for his subject that leaps off the page: Suddenly, it became apparent that while O'Brian may or may not have surpassed Forester in sea action, he had created great novels that did not look quite like anything that had come before. His evocation of Nelson's Royal Navy was an escapist world as appealing as J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, as culturally rich as William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, and as intriguingly ritualistic as Umberto Eco's medieval monastery in The Name of the Rose. In this setting, almost flawlessly sustained in the more than five-thousand-page opus, O'Brian had examined his two primary themes, love and friendship, from myriad angles, with extraordinary lucidity and a stylistic range to rival the best novelists. Critics no longer compared him to CS Forester but to Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust and Homer. —Barry Forshaw

Ghostly bursts of plaster dust. A low, rhythmic sound in the background: Red rum-RED RUM-red rum-RED RUM. A sense of something evil swirling inward on itself, like a whirlpool of black ectoplasmic energy. The experience of being inside the actual consciousness ("come out and take your medicine!") of a frightened little boy. Echoes of Shirley Jackson ("whatever walked there, walked alone"), of Poe's Masque of the Red Death and of creepy folk tales (Hansel and Gretel).

How do we love The Shining? Let us count the ways. In 1977, The Shining was the first widely read novel to confront alcoholism and child abuse in baby-boomer families—especially the way alcoholism, a will toward failure in one's work, and abusing one's kids are passed down from generation to generation. The heart of the book is not an evil hotel but a pair of father-son relationships: Jack and his father, Jack and his son. This was both daring and insightful for its time, long before "dysfunctional family" was a cliché.

The Shining was written in a frenzy. Stephen King imagined the whole novel in his head while sitting up all night in the dark, in the very Colorado hotel where the story takes place. He then transcribed it (that's how he puts it) in a burst of sustained energy. He could pull that off because, even at that early point in his career, King had figured out a successful way of structuring a popular novel. The speed of its composition gives the writing a powerful flow that sweeps you along past the awkward wording.

The Shining is one of those rare novels that can burn its images—such as Room 217—into your brain. Time alone will tell, but The Shining may well turn out to be one of the best horror novels ever written. By the way, you know that film starring Jack Nicholson? Stephen King says, "I have my days when I think I gave Kubrick a live grenade on which he heroically threw his body." —Fiona Webster

If any of King's novels exemplifies his skill at portraying the concerns of his generation, it's The Dead Zone. Although it contains a horrific subplot about a serial killer, it isn't strictly a horror novel. It's the story of an unassuming high school teacher, an Everyman, who suffers a gap in time—like a Rip Van Winkle who blacks out during the years 1970-75—and thus becomes acutely conscious of the way that American society is rapidly changing. He wakes up as well with a gap in his brain, the "dead zone" of the title. The zone gives him crippling headaches, but also grants him second sight, a talent he doesn't want and is reluctant to use. The crux of the novel concerns whether he will use that talent to alter the course of history.

The Dead Zone is a tight, well-crafted book. When asked in 1983 which of his novels so far was "the best," Stephen King answered, "The one that I think works the best is The Dead Zone. It's the one that [has] the most story." —Fiona Webster

A kingdom is in turmoil as the old king dies and his successor must do battle for the throne. Pitted against an evil wizard and a would-be rival, Prince Peter makes a daring escape and rallies the forces of Good to fight for what is rightfully his. This is a masterpiece of classic dragons-and-magic fantasy that only Stephen King could have written!