Pullman was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England, to RAF pilot Alfred Outram and Audrey Evelyn Merrifield. The family travelled with his father's job, including to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he spent time at school. His father was killed in a plane crash in 1953 when Pullman was seven. His mother remarried and with a move to Australia came Pullman's discovery of comic books including Superman and Batman, a medium which he continues to espouse. From 1957 he was educated at Ysgol Ardudwy school in Harlech, Gwynedd and spent time in Norfolk with his grandfather, a clergyman. Around this time Pullman discovered John Milton's Paradise Lost, which would become a major influence for His Dark Materials. From 1963 Pullman attended Exeter College, Oxford, receiving a Third class BA in 1968, in an interview with the Oxford Student he stated that "he did not really enjoy the English course" and that "I thought I was doing quite well until I came out with my third class degree and then I realised that I wasn’t — it was the year they stopped giving fourth class degrees otherwise I’d have got one of those". He discovered William Blake's illustrations around 1970, which would also later influence him greatly Pullman married Judith Speller in 1970 and began teaching children and writing school plays. His first published work was The Haunted Storm, which joint-won the New English Library's Young Writer's Award in 1972. He nevertheless refuses to discuss it. Galatea, an adult fantasy-fiction novel, followed in 1978, but it was his school plays which inspired his first children's book, Count Karlstein, in 1982. He stopped teaching around the publication of The Ruby in the Smoke (1986), his second children's book, whose Victorian setting is indicative of Pullman's interest in that era. Pullman taught part-time at Westminster College, Oxford between 1988 and 1996, continuing to write children's stories. He began His Dark Materials about 1993. Northern Lights (published as The Golden Compass in the US) was published in 1996 and won the Carnegie Medal, one of the most prestigious British children's fiction awards, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. Pullman has been writing full-time since 1996, but continues to deliver talks and writes occasionally for The Guardian. He was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours list in 2004. Pullman also began lecturing at a seminar in English at his alma mater, Exeter College, Oxford, in 2004. He is currently working on The Book of Dust, a sequel to his completed His Dark Materials trilogy.

Peter Ferdinand Drucker (November 19, 1909–November 11, 2005) was a writer, management consultant and university professor. His writing focused on management-related literature. Peter Drucker made famous the term knowledge worker and is thought to have unknowingly ushered in the knowledge economy, which effectively challenges Karl Marx's world-view of the political economy. George Orwell credits Peter Drucker as one of the few writers who predicted the German-Soviet Pact of 1939. The son of a high level civil servant in the Habsburg empire — his mother Caroline Bondi held a medical degree and his father Adolph Bertram Drucker was a lawyer — Drucker was born in Vienna, the capital of Austria, in a small village named Kaasgraben (now part of the 19th district of Vienna, Döbling). Following the defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I, there were few opportunities for employment in Vienna so after finishing school he went to Germany, first working in banking and then in journalism. While in Germany, he earned a doctorate in international law. The rise of Nazism forced him to leave Germany in 1933. After spending four years in London, in 1937 he wed Doris Schmidt. His wedding certificate lists his name as Peter Georg Drucker.Drucker moved permanently to the United States, where he became a university professor as well as a freelance writer and business guru. In 1943 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He taught at New York University as a Professor of Management from 1950 to 1971. From 1971 to his death he was the Clarke Professor of Social Science and Management at Claremont Graduate University. His career as a business thinker took off in 1945, when his initial writings on politics and society won him access to the internal workings of General Motors, one of the largest companies in the world at that time. His experiences in Europe had left him fascinated with the problem of authority. He shared his fascination with Donaldson Brown, the mastermind behind the administrative controls at GM. Brown invited him in to conduct what might be called a political audit. The resulting Concept of the Corporation popularized GM's multidivisional structure and led to numerous articles, consulting engagements, and additional books. Drucker was interested in the growing effect of people who worked with their minds rather than their hands. He was intrigued by employees who knew more about certain subjects than their bosses or colleagues and yet had to cooperate with others in a large organization. Rather than simply glorify the phenomenon as the epitome of human progress, Drucker analyzed it and explained how it challenged the common thinking about how organizations should be run. His approach worked well in the increasingly mature business world of the second half of the twentieth century. By that time, large corporations had developed the basic manufacturing efficiencies and managerial hierarchies of mass production. Executives thought they knew how to run companies, and Drucker took it upon himself to poke holes in their beliefs, lest organizations become stale. But he did so in a sympathetic way. He assumed that his readers were intelligent, rational, hardworking people of good will. If their organizations struggled, he believed it was usually because of outdated ideas, a narrow conception of problems, or internal misunderstandings. Drucker is the author of thirty-nine books,which have been translated into more than twenty languages. Two of his books are novels, one an autobiography. His first book was written in 1939, and from 1975 to 1995 he was an editorial columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Economist.

Winner of the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Anthony Award - the first author to win all three – international bestselling author Harlan Coben’s critically-acclaimed novels have been called “ingenious” (New York Times), “poignant and insightful” (Los Angeles Times), “consistently entertaining” (Houston Chronicle), “superb” (Chicago Tribune) and “must reading” (Philadelphia Inquirer). His most recent novels, THE INNOCENT, JUST ONE LOOK, NO SECOND CHANCE, TELL NO ONE and GONE FOR GOOD have appeared on the top of all the major bestseller lists including the New York Times, London Times, Le Monde, Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA TODAY -- and many others throughout the world. His books are published in thirty-three languages around the globe and have been number one bestsellers in more than half a dozen countries. In his first books, Coben immersed himself in the exploits of sports agent Myron Bolitar. Critics loved the series, saying, “You race to turn pages…both suspenseful and often surprisingly funny” (People). After seven books Coben wanted to try something different. “I came up with a great idea that simply would not work for Myron,” says Coben. The result was the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller TELL NO ONE, which became the most decorated thriller of 2001 – nominated for an Edgar, an Anthony, a Macavity, a Nero, and a Barry; winner of the Audie Award for Best Audio Mystery/Suspense Book (read by Steven Weber); and a #1 hardcover book on the Book Sense 76 list. Coben followed the success of TELL NO ONE with the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers GONE FOR GOOD (2002), NO SECOND CHANCE (2003), and JUST ONE LOOK (2004) and THE INNOCENT (2005). Bookspan, recognizing Coben’s broad international appeal, named NO SECOND CHANCE its first ever International Book of the Month in 2003 – the Main Selection in 15 different countries. Since his critically-acclaimed Myron Bolitar series debuted in 1995, Harlan Coben has won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award and was nominated for the Edgar two other times. Harlan also won the Anthony Award at the World Mystery Conference, was nominated for another Anthony Award, won the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America, was nominated for another Shamus, and was twice nominated for the Dilys Award by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who made his first published appearance in 1887. He was devised by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes is famous for his prowess at using logic and astute observation to solve cases. He is perhaps the most famous fictional detective, and indeed one of the best known and universally recognizable literary characters. Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring his creation. Almost all were narrated by Holmes' friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson, with the exception of two narrated by Holmes himself and two more written in the third person. The stories first appeared in magazine serialization, notably in The Strand, over a period of forty years. This was a common form of publication at the time: Charles Dickens' works were issued in a similar fashion. The stories cover a period from around 1878 up to 1903, with a final case in 1914.