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 Reginald Hill

Hill, Reginald
1936 - 2012

The British author Reginald Charles Hill was born in West Hartlepool, Durham, but he moved with his family to Carlisle,...

Further reading
Portrait of Jo Spain

Spain, Jo
1979 -

The Irish author Joanne ‘Jo’ Spain was born into a working-class family in the little notorious residential district of Bel...

Further reading
Portrait image of Frederick Forsyth

Forsyth, Frederick
1938 -

Frederick Forsyth is a major author of political thrillers. He was born in Ashford, Kent, England, as the only child in a...

Further reading
Portrait image of Lee Child

Child, Lee
1954 -

Lee Child is the pen name of the British author and television producer Jim Grant. He was born in Coventry as one of four...

Further reading