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 W. Somerset Maugham

Maugham, W. Somerset
1874 - 1965

William Somerset Maugham was a British author born in Paris. His father was a lawyer at the British Embassy there. When...

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Portrait image of James M. Cain

Cain, James M.
1892 - 1977

The American author and journalist James Mallahan Cain was a prominent figure in 20th century fiction. Alongside Dashiell...

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Portrait of Gore Vidal

Vidal, Gore
1925 - 2012

The American novelist and essayist Gore Vidal was born at West Point, New York. He was originally christened Eugene Vidal,...

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Portrait image of Åsa Nilsonne

Nilsonne, Åsa
1949 -

Åsa Nilsonne is a Swedish psychiatrist, translator and crime writer. She was born in Stockholm, but as the daughter of a ...

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