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 Mickey Spillane

Spillane, Mickey
1918 - 2006

The American author Frank Morrison Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an Irish Catholic father and Scottish...

Further reading
Portrait image of Léo Malet

Malet, Léo
1909 - 1996

French author born as Léon Malet in Montpellier. Having lost his parents when he was four years old, he was raised by his ...

Further reading
Portrait of Tarquin Hall

Hall, Tarquin
1969 -

British author and journalist born in London. He attended boarding school in Dorset until his father's bankruptcy. When he...

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Portrait of Jeff Lindsay

Lindsay, Jeff
1952 -

Jeff Lindsay’s real name is Jeffry P. Freundlich. He was born and grew up in Miami, with a father who was an art teacher. A...

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