John Malmin, Los Angeles Times · CC BY 4.0

Built a career as one of the best-selling American novelists of the mid-twentieth century, writing heavily researched novels that mixed real history and current events with frank sexual subject matter years before that combination was commonplace in mainstream fiction. Also worked as a Hollywood screenwriter alongside his fiction career. His books sold in the millions and made him one of the most widely read authors of his era, even as critics dismissed him as commercial rather than literary.