Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images (2017)
Sample of authors
King, Stephen
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine. His father, Donald Pollock, a vacuum cleaner salesman, sailor and philanderer (King has a half-sister in Brazil), went through a number of aliases before he changed his surname to King. When Stephen was two years old, his father went out to buy cigarettes and never came back. Stephen grew up in poor circumstances with his mother Ruth and his...
Literary figures
Mike (Michael) Padillo
Gender: Male
After the Second World War, he was forced (through blackmail) to become a spy and executioner for an extremely secret American secret service. But he is also the part-owner, together with ‘Mac’ McCorkle, of a bar in Bonn. Michael (Mike) Padillo is half Estonian, half Spanish, and would like to live a life in calm and peace, but in a suite of novels by Ross Thomas he is obliged to undertake sev...