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 Mark Billingham

Billingham, Mark
1961 -

The British author Mark Philip David Billingham was born in Solihull, Warwickshire, and grew up near Birmingham where he...

Further reading
Portrait of Janwillem van de Wetering

Wetering, Janwillem van de
1931 - 2008

Janwillem (actually Jan Willem) van de Wetering was a Dutch author born in Rotterdam to a merchant family. After graduating...

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
Författarporträtt av Zangwill, Israel

Zangwill, Israel
1864 - 1926

Israel Zangwill was a British Jewish author. His father had emigrated from Lithuania and his mother was a Polish refugee....

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