Follow Business Insider: You've seen Google's annual lists of trendy search terms, featuring things like  robin williams, world cup, and ebola , but those show only the most unusually popular terms, not the most popular terms overall.
Murasaki Shikibu is the best known writer to emerge from Japan's glorious Heian period. Her novel, The Tale of Genji (Genji-monogatari) is considered to be one of the world's finest and earliest novels. Some argue that Murasaki is the world's first modern novelist.
Edgar Allan Poe: the master of horror writing. The Murders In The Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, considered to be the first modern detective story, was published in the USA on April 20, 1841. In this article, first published in January 2009, author Joanne Harris celebrates the psychological complexity of his Gothic tales.