Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist. He joined the Royal Navy in 1941, serving in World War II with the ranks of Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, and Leading Torpedo Operator. MacLean effectively translated his own experiences as a torpedo man on a convoy escort into the plot of H.M.S. Ulysses, which takes place on a British destroyer. HMS Ulysses was Alistair MacLean's debut novel. Wh... Read More
Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers and adventure stories. He was born in Glasgow but spent much of his childhood and youth in Daviot, ten miles south of Inverness. While his books might have an old-fashioned flavour MacLean was an author ahead of his time in one major way. When he recycled those components of his stories that resonated most with his read... Read More
Alistair Stuart MacLean, the son of a Scots Minister, was brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941, at the age of eighteen, he joined the Royal Navy; two and a half years spent aboard a cruiser were to give him the background for HMS Ulysses, his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. He was responsible for firing torpedoes during World War II and offered his ser... Read More
Joanne Michèle Sylvie Harris is an English author especially known for her award-winning novel Chocolat. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology and fantasy. Her books are now published in over 50 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. In 2013 she was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours L... Read More
James Patterson, in full James Brendan Patterson, Jr., is an American author, principally known for his thriller and suspense novels, whose prolific output and business savvy made him a ubiquitous presence on best-seller lists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. By the early 1990s, Patterson had modified his approach to writing fiction, adopting a style characterized by unadorned prose,... Read More
James Patterson has had more New York Times bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to Guinness World Records. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977, James Patterson’s books have sold more than 240 million copies. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels, the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years, including Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. Wi... Read More
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer. He was regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. During his lifetime Conrad was admired for the richness of his prose and his renderings of dangerous life at sea and in exotic places. But his initial reputation as a masterful teller of colourful adventures of the sea masked his fascination with the individual when face... Read More
Joseph Conrad wrote numerous full-length novels. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors. A writer of complex skill and striking insight, but above all of an intensely personal vision, he has been increasingly regarded as one of the greatest English novelists. Literary critic Harold Bloom wrote that Heart of Darkness had been analysed more than any other... Read More
Joseph Conrad was born to Polish gentry parents in Berdyczów, Ukraine, then part of the vast Russian Empire. He is widely considered to be one of the most important and influential English novelists of high modernism. His output includes several volumes of short fiction and nonfiction as well as a volume of plays. Numerous writers and critics have commented that Conrad's fictional works, writte... Read More
Joseph Conrad was born in Berdyczow, which, at the time of his birth, on December 3, 1857, was a city in Ukraine. Determined to be a sailor, Conrad left home at 16 and moved to Marseilles, France, where he began his apprenticeship, working entry-level positions on several merchant ships. His career floundered, however, when he learned that to continue this line of work he needed the permission... Read More
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer. He was regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Lord Jim, Conrad’s most famous work, is also his most extensive examination of a persistent theme: the conflict between an individual’s inner moral code and his or her outward actions. Jim was born and raised in an English person's home, and when he was still a young lad... Read More
Joseph Conrad, original name Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, was an English novelist and short-story writer of Polish descent, whose works include the novels Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and the short story Heart of Darkness. During his lifetime Conrad was admired for the richness of his prose and his renderings of dangerous life at sea and in exotic places. Whether due to his multi-... Read More
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Scotland and died in Samoa at the end of a life of travels, during which he produced novels, short stories, literary essays, poetry, drama, and travel writing. Trained in law at Edinburgh University, Stevenson was under pressure to conform to the Edinburgh bourgeois society in which his family had made its name as lighthouse engineers; he preferred a more bohe... Read More
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and travel writer. A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson attracted a more negative critical response for much of the 20th century, though his reputation has been largely restored. He is currently ranked as the 26th most translated author in the world. His first two books were travel accounts. Other non-fiction based on his personal experiences fol... Read More
Alfred Bester was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books. He was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 18, 1913. His father, James J. Bester, owned a shoe store and was a first-generation American whose parents were both Austrian. Bester attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of... Read More
Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, scriptwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist and dramatist. Adams was the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Mark Carwardine is a British zoologist, a leading and outspoken conservationist, and a prolific broadcaster, columnist and photographer. In 1985 the Observer Colour Magazine paired up Mark Carwardine and Douglas Adams and invited them... Read More
Rafael Sabatini was an Italian-English writer of romance and adventure novels. After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. His most famous works have been translated into the classic swashbuckling films Captain Blood and Scaramouche. However, these books represent a small fraction of Sab... Read More
When talking about Rafael Sabatini, most people think of high adventure, sword-fighting and damsels in distress. Sabatini's writing, usually functioning in a historic setting, explores political intrigue, religion, and the place of chivalry and honour, while entertaining with clever dialogue, deftly drawn characters and action sequences as vivid and thrilling as modern movies. In all, he produc... Read More
Kenneth Grahame was a British writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows, one of the classics of children's literature. Orphaned at an early age, Grahame went to live with his grandmother in England and attended St. Edward’s School, Oxford. Money was lacking for him to go to university. Hence, his family guided him into a career at the Bank of England, with which he stayed until ill health... Read More
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of world-famous children's fiction, notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He published Phantasmagoria and Other Poems in 1869, The Hunting of the Snark in 1876 and Sylvie and Bruno in 1889. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865. With its... Read More