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 of Alistair MacLean

MacLean, Alistair
1922 - 1987

The Scottish author Alistair Stuart MacLean was born in Shettleston, Glasgow, in a Gaelic-speaking family as Alasdair...

Further reading
Portrait image of Raymond Chandler

Chandler, Raymond
1888 - 1959

American detective writer, born in Chicago. He spent his early childhood in Wyoming and Nebraska. His parents divorced when...

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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...

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Portrait of Len Deighton

Deighton, Len
1929 -

The British author Len Deighton was born as Leonard Cyril Deighton in London. His father was a chauffeur; his mother worked...

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