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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...
Sample of Authors
![Portrait of John Grisham](images/writer/651/605075b673a3be6a0c043bb52a9d890dd25efe58087bb.jpg)
Grisham, John
1955 -
American author, lawyer and politician born in Jonesboro, Arkansas. His father was a construction worker who travelled...
Further reading![Portrait image of Josef Skvorecky](images/writer/1591/619ae4238123b245c013d8c82811e2c7bcf89e0688c60.jpg)
Skvorecky, Josef
1924 - 2012
The Czech author, editor, translator and (film)scriptwriter Josef Škvorecký was born in Náchod, in Bohemia. He is co...
Further reading
Smith, Martin Cruz
1942 -
Martin Cruz Smith, born Martin William Smith, is an American author of thrillers born in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father...
Further reading![Portrait of Ted Allbeury](images/writer/3393/60992a7691ba5a1930cde3694d3ffaded9af18ec125a6.jpg)
Allbeury, Ted
1917 - 2005
The British author of espionage fiction Theodore Edward le Bouthillier Allbeury was born in Stockport, Cheshire. His father...
Further reading