“Catch-22” is a satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller, the son of poor Jewish parents. Heller wanted to be a writer from an early age. His experiences as a bombardier during World War II inspired Catch-22. While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of the lines, "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, fell madly in love with him." Within the ne... Read More
John Ernst Steinbeck was an American author. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." During his writing career, he authored 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. Ironically he is more popular with critics abroad than in his own... Read More
John Ernst Steinbeck was an American author, who wrote 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, and epic East of Eden. In the 1930s and 1940s, Ed Ricketts strongly influenced Steinbeck's writing. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast... Read More
Henry Patterson, known by his pen name Jack Higgins, is a British writer, born on 27 July 1929 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. In 1959, Higgins began writing novels. One of his aliases was James Graham. The growing success of his early work allowed him to take time off from his teaching, and he eventually left the classroom to become a full-time novelist. The Eagle Has Landed is a classic of t... Read More
Henry Patterson, known by his pen name Jack Higgins, is a British writer, born on 27 July 1929 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. In 1959, Higgins began writing novels. Patterson's early novels, written under his own name as well as under the pseudonyms James Graham, Martin Fallon, and Hugh Marlowe, are thrillers that typically feature hardened, cynical heroes, ruthless villains, and dangerous lo... Read More
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books. He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century. Evelyn Waugh’s most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust, the novel Brideshead Revisited, and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour. Waugh’s novels, although t... Read More
Colleen McCullough is an internationally acclaimed Australian writer whose novels have been sold in twenty territories. In 1963, McCullough moved for four years to the United Kingdom. At the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, she met the chairman of the neurology department at Yale University who offered her a research associate job at Yale. She spent 10 years researching and teaching in t... Read More
Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist who wrote successful thrillers or adventure stories, the best known of which are perhaps The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare, both having been made into successful films. He also wrote under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. While a university student, MacLean began writing short stories for extra income, winning a competition in 1954 with the mari... Read More
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
Jonathan Littell is a writer and a dual citizen of the United States and France and is of Jewish background. His first novel written in French, Les Bienveillantes, won two major French awards. Littell is the son of author Robert Littell. Although his grandparents were Jews who emigrated from Russia to the United States at the end of the 19th century, Littell does not define himself as a Jew "at... Read More
Paul William Gallico was an American novelist, short story and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures. He is perhaps best remembered for The Snow Goose, his only real critical success, and for the novel The Poseidon Adventure, primarily through the 1972 film adaptation. He went to school in the public schools of New York, and in 1916 went to Columbia University. He gr... Read More