John Preston is a former Arts Editor of the Evening Standard and the Sunday Telegraph. For ten years he was the Sunday Telegraph's television critic and one of its chief feature writers. His novel, The Dig, based on the 1939 archaeological excavation at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, has been filmed starring Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and Lily James. His first nonfiction book, A Very English Scandal, was published to great acclaim in 2016 and turned into BAFTA-winning BBC drama series. His latest book Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell was published to great acclaim in February 2021. It has been shortlisted for both the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Costa Biography Prize and is being adapted for television by Working Title productions. Michael McDowell wrote a number of well-received horror novels, including The Amulet, The Elementals, and the Blackwater series, as well as historical fiction. With Dennis Schuetz, he cowrote four detective novels under the pseudonym Nathan Aldyne and was also active in screenwriting such movies as Beetlejuice, The Nightmare before Christmas, and Thinner. He provided episodes for a number of television horror anthologies, among them Tales from the Darkside.