Thomas Charles Louis Holt (born 13 September 1961) is a British novelist. In addition to fiction published under his own name, he writes fantasy under the pseudonym K. J. Parker.

Biography

Holt was born in London, the son of novelist Hazel Holt, and was educated at Westminster School, Wadham College, Oxford, and The College of Law, London. He worked as a solicitor in Somerset for seven years before writing full-time. His works include mythopoeic novels which parody or take as their theme various aspects of mythology, history, or literature and develop them in new and often humorous ways. He has also written a number of historical novels writing as Thomas Holt. Steve Nallon collaborated with Holt to write I, Margaret, a satirical autobiography of Margaret Thatcher published in 1989.

K. J. Parker

K. J. Parker is the pseudonym under which Holt has published fantasy fiction. Holt's assumed identity as K. J. Parker was kept secret for 17 years, until April 2015. While Parker's stories take place in secondary worlds with fictional geographies and world history, some of the typical features of fantasy fiction such as explicit use of magic are not present in his novels. His short stories, on the other hand, frequently deal with magic and the problems it brings for sorcerers. The stories tend to have tragic themes with characters whose actions are unintentionally, ultimately self-destructive. Other major themes in the books are politics, technology (especially disruptive innovation), and either or both of the former as a means to power.

Selected awards and nominations

Finalist for the Crawford Award for his first fantasy novel, Expecting Someone Taller. Winner of World Fantasy Award—Novella in 2012 and 2013 for A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong and Let Maps to Other, and nominated in 2014. Nominated for the 2016 World Fantasy Award—Novel for Savages.

Bibliography of Tom Holt

Novels

Humorous fantasy

Historical

Using Thomas Holt as author name.

Other

Short fiction

Parodies of musical works

Bibliography of K. J. Parker

Novels

The Fencer trilogy

The Fencer trilogy follows Bardas Loredan, a fencer-at-law.

The Scavenger trilogy

The Scavenger trilogy is about a man, or possibly god, who wakes up on a battlefield with amnesia and discovers that he is being hunted by enemies he no longer remembers.

The Engineer trilogy

The Engineer trilogy features an engineer, Ziani Vaatzes, who is forced into exile from his home city and plots an elaborate revenge.

Siege

The Corax trilogy

The titular character, Saevus Corax, is a battlefield salvage contractor fleeing from his responsibility as a member of a royal family, resulting in an "extended, bloody travelogue dotted with humor and snark".

Other novels

Short fiction

Novellas

Novelettes

Short stories

Collections

Nonfiction

Short essays

Free short stories online