John Ray Grisham Jr. is an American novelist, lawyer, and former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his best-selling legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 37 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three authors to have sold two million copies on the first printing.
Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel is an American writer, best known for her romance novels. She is the bestselling living author and one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time, with over 800 million copies sold. As of 2021, she has written 190 books, including over 140 novels.
Barbara Jean Lee is an American politician and social worker who has served as a U.S. representative from California since 1998. A member of the Democratic Party, Lee represents California's 12th congressional district, which is based in Oakland and covers most of the northern part of Alameda County. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, it is one of the nation's most Democratic districts, with a rating of D+40.
Earth and High Heaven was a 1944 novel by Gwethalyn Graham. It was the first Canadian novel to reach number one on The New York Times bestseller list and stayed on the list for 37 weeks, selling 125 000 copies in the United States that year.
The Bostonians is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Century Magazine in 1885–1886 and then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centres on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin and a Boston feminist; and Verena Tarrant, a pretty, young protégée of Olive's in the feminist movement. The storyline concerns the struggle between Ransom and Olive for Verena's allegiance and affection, though the novel also includes a wide panorama of political activists, newspaper people, and quirky eccentrics.
Eric Jerome Dickey was an American author. He wrote several crime novels involving grifters, ex cons, and assassins, the latter novels having more diverse settings, moving from Los Angeles to the United Kingdom to the West Indies, each having an international cast of characters. Dickey was a New York Times bestselling novelist.
Christine Feehan is an American author of paranormal romance, paranormal military thrillers, and fantasy. She is a #1 New York Times, #1 Publishers Weekly, and International bestselling author of seven series; Carpathian, GhostWalker Series, Drake Sisters, Sister of the HeartSeries, Shadow Riders Series, Leopard Series and Torpedo Ink Series. Six of the seven series have made #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. As of January 2020 she has 80 published novels. The first in her Torpedo Ink Series, Judgment Road, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list.
Theodora Goss is a Hungarian-American fiction writer and poet. Her writing has been nominated for major awards, including the Nebula, Locus, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, and Seiun Awards. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Year's Best volumes.
Mary Jo Putney is a best-selling American author of over twenty-five historical and contemporary romance novels. She has also published romantic fantasy novels as M.J. Putney. Her books are known for their unusual subject matter, including alcoholism, death, and domestic abuse.
Judith Lewis, better known by her pen name Cassandra Clare, is an American author of young adult fiction, best known for her bestselling series The Mortal Instruments.
A gentlewoman in the original and strict sense is a woman of good family, analogous to the Latin generosus and generosa. The closely related English word "gentry" derives from the Old French genterise, gentelise, with much of the meaning of the French noblesse and the German Adel, but without the strict technical requirements of those traditions, such as quarters of nobility.
Lisa Lutz is an American author. She began her career writing screenplays for Hollywood. One of her rejected screenplays became the basis for a popular series of novels about a family of private investigators, the Spellmans. She is a 2020 recipient of an Alex Award.
Gail Carriger is an author of steampunk fiction and an American archaeologist. She was born in Bolinas, an unincorporated community in Marin County, California, and attended high school at Marin Academy. She received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College, a masters of science in archaeological materials at England's University of Nottingham in 2000, and a master of arts in anthropology at the University of California Santa Cruz in 2008. She is a 2010 recipient of the Alex Awards.
The Cuckoo's Calling is a 2013 crime fiction novel written by J. K. Rowling, and published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. It is the first novel in the Cormoran Strike series of detective novels and was followed by The Silkworm in 2014, Career of Evil in 2015, Lethal White in 2018, Troubled Blood in 2020 and The Ink Black Heart in 2022. A seventh book The Running Grave was released on 26 September 2023.
Kendall Ryan is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling American novelist. She has written more than two dozen novels, including the self-published bestsellers Resisting Her, Hard to Love, The Impact of You, Hitched, Screwed, The Fix Up, Filthy Beautiful Lies and The Room Mate. Her books are described as "beautiful, electrifying love stories that can make even the most pessimistic person believe in happily ever afters." She writes romance, new adult and romantic comedies, and her books have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. Her traditionally published books include the bestselling Love By Design series with Simon & Schuster.
Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. He is the author of three full-length books: a novel, Long Division (2013), and two memoirs, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013) and the award-winning Heavy: An American Memoir (2018). Laymon was awarded a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Fellows Program in 2022.
The Gentlewoman was a weekly illustrated paper for women founded in 1890 and published in London.
Rachel Abbott is an English author of psychological thrillers. A self-publisher, her first seven novels have combined to sell over three million copies, and have all been bestsellers on Amazon's Kindle store. In 2015, she was named the 14th bestselling author over the last five years on Amazon's Kindle in the UK.
Steve Canal is an American author, public speaker, branding expert and former basketball player based in New York City.
Sue Orr is a fiction writer, journalist and creative writing teacher from New Zealand.
