Meny
  • It is 86 years today since Joyce Carol Oates was born.

    American author, born into a Protestant working-class family in the little town of Lockport in the western part of the state of New York. The family had a difficult economic situation and she spent most of her childhood and adolescence with her paternal grandparents on a farm in Erie. As a child, she liked to read and write; she got her first book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, from her g...

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  • It is 67 years today since Alexandra Marinina was born.

    Alexandra Marinina is the pseudonym of Marina Anatolyevna Alekseyeva, a Russian author born in Lviv, western Ukraine. Her father, who died in 1973, was a police officer and her mother a lawyer. When she was still young, the family moved to Leningrad (now St.Petersburg) and then to Moscow. She attended an English-language school in Leningrad, and the Rimsky-Korsakov conservatory in Moscow. She...

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Sample of Authors

Portrait image of Agatha Christie

Christie, Agatha
1890 - 1976

English detective writer, born as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in an affluent middle-class home in Torquay in Devon County....

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Portrait of Ken Follett

Follett, Ken
1949 -

British author and journalist born in Cardiff, Wales. Kenneth "Ken" Follett’s parents were active members of the church of t...

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Portrait of Jakob Arjouni

Arjouni, Jakob
1964 - 2013

Pseudonym for the German author and dramatist Jakob Bothe. He was born as Jakob Michelsen in Frankfurt am Main as the son...

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Portrait of Ed McBain

McBain, Ed
1926 - 2005

Ed McBain is the best-known pen name for Evan Hunter, born Salvatore Alberto Lombino, a versatile and prolific American...

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