It’s the birthday of one of the bestselling authors of all time, Sidney Sheldon (1917-2007, #nicelonglife), who wrote movie screenplays like The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer and sitcoms like I Dream of Jeannie before becoming a suspense novelist who would sell 300 million books. (I’m way too young for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, but [...]
It’s the birthday of Nora Roberts (b. 1950), bestselling author of more than 225 romance novels, which (I’m just going to say this) seems like plenty. Roberts is so prolific that she publishes romantic suspense novels and science fiction police procedurals under the pseudonym J.D. Robb to help stave off public suspicion of anyone who [...]
It’s the birthday of Alice Sebold (b. 1963), whose novel The Lovely Bones (2002) has sold about 10 million copies and has been called “the most successful debut novel since Gone with the Wind.” Sebold was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where her father taught Spanish at the University [...]
It’s the birthday of Jonathan Kellerman (b. 1949), who started out as a psychologist specializing in pediatrics, began writing bestselling crime novels, and eventually left his practice to write full time. He’s especially known for his books featuring a child psychologist, Alex Delaware, who consults for the L.A.P.D. Kellerman was born in New York City [...]
It’s the birthday of J.K. Rowling (b. 1965), author of the Harry Potter series, the bestselling book series in history. Rowling was the first author ever to become a billionaire but eventually fell off the billionaire list after giving huge buttery handfuls of money to charity. Joanne Rowling was born in Yate in the unpronounceable [...]
It’s the birthday of bestselling children’s book author Andrew Clements (b. 1949), master of the genre known as “school stories” and best known for his novel Frindle (1996), in which a fifth grader named Nick locks horns with a dictionary-loving teacher who tries to squelch his attempt to get the made-up word “frindle” into common [...]
It’s the birthday of bestselling Irish author Maeve Binchy (1940-2012), beloved for such novels as Light a Penny Candle (1982), Circle of Friends (1990, movie adaptation 1995), and Tara Road (1998), as well as for her famously warm, generous, and good humored personality. (NB: Today is Tuesday but feels like Monday, and having a lovely [...]
It’s the birthday of American writer Harold Robbins (1916-1997), one of the bestselling authors in history. Robbins used the profits from selling 750 million books to buy yachts, obscene amounts of cocaine, and plenty of mansions and to host orgies at which he thoughtfully provided lots of terry towels, so one does wonder about his [...]
It’s the birthday of Tom Clancy (1947-2013), who created the espionage thriller or “techno-thriller” and wrote 17 novels that made it to No. 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. Clancy’s fifth novel, Clear and Present Danger (1989), sold 1,625,544 copies exactly (I counted) and was therefore the bestselling novel of the 1980s. (Just [...]
It’s the birthday of John Grisham (b. 1955), whose legal thrillers have sold about 300 million copies and who is the tenth richest author in the world, worth about $300 million (nice symmetry there). Grisham was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and grew up in Southaven, Mississippi. His mother encouraged reading, and he loved Mark Twain; [...]