Winnie-the-Pooh was banned in Russia because he was deemed to be pro-Nazi.
Born and raised in Maine, Stephen King uses the state as a backdrop to many of his novels.
Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot is from Belgium. By 1960, Christie hated writing about him but did so because he was so popular.
Agatha Christie is estimated to have sold over two billion books.
The K in J.K. Rowling's name stands for Kathleen, although her full name is simply Joanne Rowling. The K was added to honor her grandmother.
Bill Gates spent $30.8 million on a copy of the Codex Leicester by Leonardo Di Vinci.
First serialized in 1836, The Pickwick Papers was Charles Dickens' first full novel. He was 24 years old.
With 500 million copies sold, the 16th-century Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is the best-selling novel in history.
Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West, FL, throughout the 1930s. Today the city holds an annual Ernest Hemingway lookalike competition.
Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables contains an 823-word-long sentence.