Early career
After a summer trip to the Soviet Union, Westbrook wrote his first book at age 17, Journey Behind the Iron Curtain, which was published in 1963 by G.P. Putnam's Sons. In the 1960s, when he was at Columbia University, he was inspired to write his first novel, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart , published by Crown in 1970. The novel became an MGM film, with actor Don Johnson in the title role. The film was praised by Andy Warhol for its depiction of the New York counterculture scene of the late 1960s.
In the 1980s, while living with his family in Hawaii, Westbrook began a handful of satirical mysteries set in 1950s Los Angeles.
In 1988, Westbrook was living in Greece when his mother, Sheilah Graham, died on November 17 in Palm Beach, Florida, of congestive heart failure. She left him her papers and directed him to tell her story. [1] He did so, detailing his mother's romance with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He included many details omitted from Graham's best-selling 1958 memoir, Beloved Infidel . Published by HarperCollins in 1995, [2] The American magazine Kirkus Reviews considered Intimate Lies a valuable contribution to the literature on Fitzgerald and Graham. [3]
A paperback book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardback (hardcover) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.
John Dufresne is an American author of French Canadian descent born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Worcester State College in 1970 and the University of Arkansas in 1984. He is a professor in the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program of the English Department at Florida International University. In 2012, he won a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for his work.
Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initially owning 53% of the joint venture, and Pearson PLC initially owning the remaining 47%. Since 18 December 2019, Penguin Random House has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann.
Berkley Books is now an imprint of the Penguin Group.
Harry Lewis Golden was an American writer and newspaper publisher.
The New American Library is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publishes trade and hardcover titles. It is currently an imprint of Penguin Random House; it was announced in 2015 that the imprint would publish only nonfiction titles.
G. P. Putnam's Sons is an American book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.
Sonora is a genus of small harmless colubrid snakes commonly referred to as ground snakes, which are endemic to North America.
Conan the Liberator is a fantasy novel by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Bantam Books in February 1979, and reprinted in 1982; later paperback editions were issued by Ace Books. The first hardcover edition was published by Tor Books in June 2002; a trade paperback followed from the same publisher in 2003. The first British edition was from Sphere Books. The novel was later gathered together with Conan the Swordsman and Conan and the Spider God into the omnibus collection Sagas of Conan.
Sheilah Graham was a British-born, nationally syndicated American gossip columnist during Hollywood's "Golden Age". In her youth, she had been a showgirl and a freelance writer for Fleet Street in London. These early experiences would converge in her career in Hollywood, which spanned nearly four decades, as a successful columnist and author.
Beloved Infidel is a 1959 American DeLuxe Color biographical drama film made by 20th Century Fox in CinemaScope and based on the relationship of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham. The film was directed by Henry King and produced by Jerry Wald from a screenplay by Sy Bartlett, based on the 1957 memoir by Sheilah Graham and Gerold Frank. The music score was by Franz Waxman, the cinematography by Leon Shamroy and the art direction by Lyle R. Wheeler and Maurice Ransford. The film was the sixth and final collaboration between King and Peck.
Red Nails is a 1977 collection of three fantasy short stories and one essay by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The collection was edited by Karl Edward Wagner. It was first published in hardcover by Berkley/Putnam in 1977, and in paperback by Berkley Books the same year. It was reprinted in hardcover for the Science Fiction Book Club, also in 1977, and combined with the Wagner-edited The Hour of the Dragon and The People of the Black Circle in the book club's omnibus edition The Essential Conan in 1998. The stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s.
The People of the Black Circle is a 1977 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The collection was edited by Karl Edward Wagner. It was first published in hardcover by Berkley/Putnam in 1977, and in paperback by Berkley Books the same year. It was reprinted in hardcover for the Science Fiction Book Club, also in 1977, and combined with the Wagner-edited The Hour of the Dragon and Red Nails in the book club's omnibus edition The Essential Conan in 1998. The stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s.
George Lansing Raymond, was a prominent professor of Aesthetic Criticism at Princeton University from 1881 to 1905, and author of a new system of esthetics. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.
Penguin Random House LLC is a British-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers.
Support and Defend is a thriller novel, written by Mark Greaney and published on July 22, 2014. The book is a spinoff from the Tom Clancy universe and features FBI agent and The Campus operative Dominic “Dom” Caruso, who is President Jack Ryan’s nephew. It is the first novel in the franchise written after Clancy’s death during the previous year, as well as Greaney’s first solo contribution to the overall series.
Reed Farrel Coleman is an American writer of crime fiction and a poet.
Frances Kroll Ring was the last secretary and personal assistant to F. Scott Fitzgerald before his death.
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is a 2018 non-fiction book by American author Anand Giridharadas. It is his third book and was published by Alfred A. Knopf on August 28, 2018. The book appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.
