We all know that sequels can be a problem. Especially if your first novel happens to have been "Catch-22", breathtaking and one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century. Millions of copies sold and a phrase added to the language! The Big Read by the BBC ranked Catch-22 as number 11 on a web poll of the UK's best-loved book. The Observer listed Catch-22 as one of the 100 greatest... Read More
Richard Stanley Francis was a British crime writer. His novels centre on horse racing in England. After wartime service in the RAF, Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt. Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens, for which he was offered the a... Read More
Richard Stanley Francis was a British crime writer, and former steeplechase jockey, whose novels centre on horse racing in England. Francis is the only three-time recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best Novel, winning for Forfeit in 1970, Whip Hand in 1981, and Come To Grief in 1996. Britain's Crime Writers Association awarded him its Gold Dagger Award for fiction in... Read More
Richard Stanley Francis was a British crime writer, and former steeplechase jockey, whose novels centre on horse racing in England. His mysteries always revolve around some aspect of horse racing, and in Driving Force, he focuses on the horse transport business. The hero of the novel is Freddie Croft, a former steeplechase jockey and now the owner of a successful fleet of horse vans. It has bee... Read More
Dick Francis was a Welsh-born English novelist, short story writer, autobiographer, and biographer. A former steeplechase jockey, Francis is famous for his suspense novels as well as his championship career. His thrillers usually focus on corruption in the world of horse racing and feature a hero struggling through various physical and psychological obstacles to return order to that world. Fran... Read More
Dick Francis was a popular British horse racing crime writer and retired jockey. Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. Francis rarely re-used his lead characters. Only two heroes were used more than once; injured ex-jockey turned one-armed private investigator Sid Halley and Kit Fielding. Dick Francis worked on his books with his wife, Mary, before her death. Dick considered hi... Read More
Richard Stanley Francis was a British crime writer, and former steeplechase jockey, whose novels centre on horse racing in England. He was England's champion jockey in 1954, and in 1957 he was a jockey for the Queen Mother's horse Devon Loch in the Grand National. But the horse stumbled in the last stretch and was unable to recover. After this great disappointment, Francis retired from his care... Read More
Dick Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens, for which he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter, which he spurned. He set his first thriller, Dead Cert, published in 1962, in the world of horse racing, establishing a specialized niche for his work. His novel Whip Hand is one of only two novels to have received both the Gold... Read More
Dick Francis "has simply never failed. Every one of his opening sentences pulls the reader in and doesn't let go until the last, perfect word," according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Dick Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens, for which he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter, which he spurned. The book's success led to... Read More
Graham Bruce Hancock is a British writer and journalist who specialises in pseudoscientific theories involving ancient civilisations, stone monuments or megaliths, altered states of consciousness, ancient myths, and astronomical or astrological data from the past. His books include Lords of Poverty, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis, The Mars Mystery, Heaven's M... Read More
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a high school teacher father who published poetry and a Russian-born mother who retained her communist roots. Both her sympathy for the labour class and her gradual mental decay deeply affected Ginsberg in his youth. Intending to study law, Ginsberg enrolled at Columbia University in 1943, but he soon turned to literature, taking classes f... Read More
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a high school teacher father who published poetry and a Russian-born mother who retained her communist roots. Ginsberg's willingness to talk about taboo subjects made him a controversial figure during the conservative 1950s and a significant figure in the 1960s. In the mid-1950s, no reputable publishing company would even consider publishi... Read More
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a high school teacher father who published poetry and a Russian-born mother who retained her communist roots. Ginsberg’s public breakthrough came in San Francisco, in 1955, when he read the first part of “Howl” before an audience as part of an event that launched the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who... Read More
Ginsberg first came to public attention in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems. Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992. “Howl,” a long-lined poem in the tradition of Walt Whitman, is an outcry of rage and despair against a destructive, abusive society. Ginsberg is strongly identified with the literary and cultural phenom... Read More
Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian school teacher and author of books that examined the history of philosophy and religion for an audience of young readers. Gaarder studied the history of ideas, religion, and Nordic literature at the University of Oslo. After graduating in 1976, he worked as a secondary-school teacher of philosophy, religion, and literature in Oslo and Bergen. He began his literary... Read More
Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones, and a sequence of novels and films beginning with the life of a thirtysomething singleton in London trying to make sense of life and love. She was part of the screenwriting team on the associated movies. Bridget Jones begins the year with a set of resolutions dedicated to... Read More
Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter. She worked for many years in London as a newspaper and TV journalist, travelling as wildly and as often as possible to Africa, India and Central America. She is the author of four novels: Cause Celeb, Bridget Jones’ s Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, and co-wrote the screenplays for... Read More
Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat, The Testament of Loki and many other bestselling novels, plus the novella The Blue Salt Road, short stories, screenplays and cookbooks. Her books are published in more than 50 countries and have won numerous awards. The Evil Seed, Sleep, Pale Sister and Chocolat were published before she retired from teaching to become an author... Read More
Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris is an English author. Harris is the holder of honorary doctorates in literature from the University of Huddersfield and the University of Sheffield and is an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge. She is an elected member of the Management Committee of the Society of Authors. In Blackberry Wine, Jay Mackintosh is a 37-year-old has-been writer from Lon... Read More
Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, whose books include fourteen novels, two cookbooks and many short stories. Her first novel, The Evil Seed, was published in 1989, with only limited success. Sleep, Pale Sister is her second novel. In 1999 her third novel, Chocolat, a darkly magical modern folk-tale, thematically based on food and set in the Gers region of France, reached No. 1 in the Sun... Read More