Susan Elizabeth Phillips

“I started to write completely by accident,” explains bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips.  Simply stated, one day she and her best friend decided it would be fun to try to write a book together.  The market was ripe, and the two received an offer from the first publisher they contacted.  Phillips discovered she really enjoyed writing and continued on her own. 

Soon after relocating to Chicago, she found her niche in contemporary romantic comedies such as Fancy Pants, Hot Shot, and Honey Moon.  The first in her extremely popular Chicago Stars series, It Had to Be You, features a woman who knows nothing about sports but who inherits a professional football team.  The most recent, Natural Born Charmer, was named the Outstanding Romance of 2007 by the American Library Association.  Phillips is the only five-time winner of the Romance Writers of America Favorite Book of the Year Award, and she was inducted into the Romance Writers Hall of Fame in 2001.  Her next book, What I Did for Love, will be published in February 2009.

P.J. Tracy

P.J. Tracy is the name under which Patricia (P.J.) and Traci Lambrecht write a thrilling series of comic mysteries.  The mother/daughter team's original whodunit, Monkeewrench, quickly became a bestseller and earned nominations for best first novel.  Live Bait, Dead Run, and Snow Blind soon followed, and a fifth title is currently in the works. 

P.J. had her first short story published when Traci was young, and she established herself as a moderately successful free-lance writer.  Traci majored in Russian studies in college but joined her mother in writing when she needed money for a European trip.  Despite living in different states, the duo keeps in contact through every-other-month visits, phone conferences, and e-mail drafts.  Even when working independently, the two are so connected that they often cannot recall who contributed what to the finished novel. 

Andrew Greeley

Chicago native Andrew Greeley is known as priest, author, journalist, and benefactor.  He is one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of our time, and his wit and insights make him a popular subject for national radio and television interviews.  A prolific writer, Father Greeley is celebrated for both his general fiction and his mystery series.  He is also credited with many important works on the Catholic faith, especially those that examine contemporary and controversial issues.  His versatility is evident in two of his most recent works: Irish Tiger, the eleventh installment in the Nuala Anne McGrail mysteries, and A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq, 2001-2007.  Father Greeley is very active in his hometown, contributing a weekly column to the Chicago Sun-Times and helping to establish local charities.  Further proving his loyalty, his website declares he "remains an inveterate Chicago sports fan, cheering for the Bulls, Bears, and the Cubs, while praying for them to improve."

Sara Paretsky

Translated into almost thirty languages, Sara Paretsky’s books have earned many accolades, including the coveted British Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for top novel of 2004 (Blacklist) and Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement.  Paretsky first introduced her stereotype-shattering heroine in 1982 with Indemnity Only.  In a genre that had traditionally depicted women either as victims or as femme fatales, tough-talking female investigator V.I. Warshawski signaled a new and welcome direction, one in which a female character could display intelligence, strength, courage, and ability.

Long associated with Chicago, Paretsky first visited the city in 1966 to do community service work in the same neighborhood where Martin Luther King was organizing.  Even today she demonstrates that same passion for social justice through her work in several foundations both nationally and in Chicago, her home for many years.  Bleeding Kansas, Paretsky's 14th novel and most recent best seller, is set in the part of the Kaw River Valley where Sara was raised.

 

Scott Turow

Born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 12, 1949, Scott Turow has enjoyed a successful dual-career as both lawyer and novelist.  He is acclaimed for combining these two talents into bestselling legal thrillers such as The Burden of Proof and Pleading Guilty.  His impressive academic record includes teaching creative writing at Stanford University and graduating with honors from Harvard Law School.  From 1978 to 1986 he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, after which he turned to writing fiction.  Turow's first novel, Presumed Innocent, won the prestigious Silver Dagger of British Crime Writers, and Personal Injuries was named as the Best Fiction Novel of 1999 by Time magazine.  The author is active in a number of charitable causes including Literacy Chicago, and he continues to balance his writing with his work as a partner in the Chicago offices of a national law firm.

Eleanor Taylor Bland

Award-winning author of the Marti MacAlister mystery series, Eleanor Taylor Bland was born in Boston, Massachusetts on December 31, 1944.  At only fourteen she married a sailor, and eventually they settled near the Great Lakes, his last duty station.  Bland graduated from College of Lake County and Southern Illinois University, later working at Abbott Laboratories as an accountant.  After surviving a serious bout with cancer, she adopted a “live in the present” philosophy, one that is also evident in her writing.  Her heroine, African-American police detective Marti MacAlister, made her first appearance in the novel Dead Time and soon resurfaced in Slow Burn and Gone Quiet.  The thirteenth book in the series, A Dark and Deadly Deception, was published in 2005.   An interesting note:  the town of Lincoln Prairie, fictional location for her novels, is actually a mix of Waukegan, North Chicago, and Zion.

Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire is the bestselling author of many novels including Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Son of a Witch and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the basis for the Tony Award–winning Broadway musical. He has also written over a dozen books for children. He was born in 1954 in Albany, New York and received his Ph. D. in English and American Literature from Tufts University.  Many of Maguire's adult novels are revisionist retellings of classic children's stories; for example, in Wicked he transformed the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz into the sympathetic protagonist Elphaba.  Maguire currently makes his home in Boston, Massachusetts.

Sharyn McCrumb

Sharyn McCrumb is a bestselling mystery author who has received the Chaffin and Plattner Awards for Southern fiction, in addition to many other honors. She launched her acclaimed Appalachian Ballad novel series with If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O.  “My books are like Appalachian quilts,” says Ms. McCrumb. “I take brightly colored scraps of legends, ballads, fragments of rural life, and local tragedy, and I piece them together into a complex whole that tells not only a story, but also a deeper truth about the culture of the mountain South.”  Ms. McCrumb has been writer-in-residence at King College in Tennessee and Shepherd College in West Virginia, and she has lectured at universities and libraries throughout the United States and Europe. She lives and writes in the Virginia Blue Ridge.  Her most recent book is Once Around the Track.

Robert Jordan

Robert Jordan was born James Oliver Rigney, Jr. in Charleston, South Carolina on October 17, 1948.  He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from The Citadel in 1974, and served two tours of duty in Vietnam, earning numerous medals.  Jordan became famous with the publication of his best-selling Fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, which chronicles a magical battle between the forces of light and of darkness in a desperate and complex world.  Jordan was working on the twelfth title in the series when he died on September 19, 2007.

Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts was born in Silver Springs, Maryland on October 10, 1950.  It was during a blizzard in 1979 that Roberts, a stay-at-home mother, began to write.  She found she had a knack for writing and after several rejections her first novel, Irish Hearts, was published in 1981.  Her illustrious career as a romance writer has landed many of her novels at the top of the bestsellers list and her books have been published in over 35 countries.  Since 1995 Roberts has also found success with her series of romantic suspense novels published under the pseudonym J. D. Robb.  Roberts’ most recent books are Irish Dreams and High Noon. 

Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy was born in Baltimore County, Maryland on April 12, 1947.  Known for his collection of best-selling political and military thrillers, Clancy has famously stated that he studied English Literature in college because he was not smart enough to study physics.  But upon publication of his very first novel in 1984, The Hunt for Red October, Clancy proved he has a deep knowledge and understanding of the very complex inner-workings of the U.S. government.  In addition to writing dozens of best-selling fiction novels, Clancy has written several nonfiction books about the U.S. military, including Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces and Into the Storm: A Study in Command which he co-wrote with General Fred Franks, Jr.  Many of Clancy’s books have also been turned into popular movies and video games.

Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1947.  During his second year of law school Coelho chose to abandon his studies and travel throughout Central and South America, Europe and North Africa.  He sought out information on secret societies, religions and mysticism, which eventually led him to join a branch of Catholicism called Regnus Agnus Mundi.  He detailed his 1986 spiritual journey along the Santiago de Compostela, the Road of Santiago, in his book The Pilgrimage.   Coelho’s first major success as an author came with the 1988 publication of his book The Alchemist, an adult fable in which a boy embarks upon a courageous journey and learns to follow his heart.  The Alchemist has been translated into 56 languages and has sold over 40 million copies in more than 150 countries.  Many of Coelho’s subsequent books have also become bestsellers including Eleven Minutes and The Zahir.  His latest novel is The Witch of Portobello.

Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde was born in London, England on January 11, 1961.  Fforde started his career in the film industry, but in 2001 shifted his focus to writing and published his first book, The Eyre Affair.  This was the first of his Thursday Next mystery series, which revolves around detective Thursday, who is a Special Operative in literary detection.  Fforde’s imaginative fiction incorporates classic characters and stories from authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte and travels through time, leading readers on madcap adventures that are suspenseful, humorous and completely unique.  The fifth installment, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels was just released in July.  Fforde currently makes his home in Brecon, Powys, Wales.

Nevada Barr

Author of the popular Anna Pigeon mystery series, Nevada Barr was born in Yerington, Nevada in 1952.  The daughter of airplane pilots, she was raised on a mountain airport in the Sierras.   Barr's first love was the theater and she has a Master of Fine Arts in Acting.   She worked in commercials, radio, and theater for eighteen years before deciding to become a park ranger, like her protagonist Anna.  It was during her time as a ranger that Barr wrote her first Anna Pigeon mystery, Track of the Cat, which went on to win both Agatha and Anthony awards for best first mystery.   Barr, who now lives in New Orleans, has written thirteen books and is also an accomplished painter.

Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon is the author of many award wining books, including the Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the young adult novel Summerland, winner of the 2003 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and Wonderboys which was made into a critically acclaimed film.  Mr. Chabon (pronounced, in his words, "Shea as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi"), believes that three things are required for success as a novelist: talent, luck, and discipline. As he says, “Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.” Michael Chabon’s most recent novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, is a hardboiled detective novel set in an alternate world where Israel failed to be born and millions of European Jewish refugees took shelter in Alaska, creating a miniature American Yiddishland. It became a New York Times bestseller immediately upon publication. In November 2007, his short swashbuckling adventure novel, Gentlemen of the Road, serialized in fifteen chapters in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, will be published by Del Rey.

Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan was born in 1948 in Aldershot, England, the son of an army
officer who spent much of his childhood in East Asia, Germany and North
Africa.  He received his BA in English from the University of Sussex and his
MA in English Literature from the University of East Anglia.  He won the
Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first published collection of short
stories, First Love, Last Rites.  Writing literary fiction novels exploring
the human psyche, several of McEwan’s novels have garnered critical and
financial acclaim, including 1997’s Enduring Love, 2002’s Atonement and
2005’s Saturday.  His newest novel, On Chesil Beach was released on June 5,
2007.            

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri.  Angelou suffered many tragedies in her early childhood forming the basis for much of her writing.  At the age of sixteen she gave birth to her son, author and poet Guy Raphael Johnson.  Angelou’s first work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in 1968.  This autobiography was based on her traumatic childhood and the strong resilience she found within herself to persevere and overcome her hardships.  In addition to Angelou’s numerous works of poetry and prose, she is also a singer, actress, director and playwright.  She is the first African-American woman admitted to the Directors Guild of America.  Angelou currently lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where she is a professor at Wake Forest University.

John Lescroart

John Lescroart (pronounced Less-KWAH) was born in Houston, Texas in 1948.  He is the author of legal and crime thrillers featuring the characters Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky.  His most recent book, The Suspect is the second in a new series featuring private investigator Wyatt Hunt, whom we first met in the 2006 bestseller The Hunt Club.  Lescroart worked a series of jobs after graduating for the University of California, Berkeley, focusing more of his spare time on writing music than writing books.  By the age of thirty he decided to switch focus and write novels, but it wasn’t until he had a near death experience ten years later that he finally decided to write full time.  His hard work paid off and he’s been a successful author ever since. 

E. L. Doctorow

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in 1931 in New York City.  After doing graduate work at Columbia University and serving in the U. S. Army, Doctorow became a senior editor for New American Library and then served as the editor in chief at Dial Press.  He gained fame and critical acclaim as an author of historical fiction in 1975 with the publication of Ragtime.  That story, set in New York City at the start of the twentieth century, follows the lives of three American families and digs deeply into issues of racism, classism and social injustice.  In 1980 the book was made into a motion picture, and in 1998 it became a Broadway musical.   Throughout his career Doctorow has written books that blend history and social criticism, and his efforts have won him numerous awards including the PEN/Faulkner Award and a National Humanities Medal.  His most recent novel was 2005's The March, which details General Sherman’s controversial and destructive Civil War march through Georgia and the Carolinas.  Doctorow continues to live and work in New York.

Lois McMaster Bujold

One of the most acclaimed writers in the field of speculative fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold burst on to the scene in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of her tremendously popular Vorkosigan Saga novels.  She has received numerous accolades and prizes, including two Nebula Awards for Best Novel, four Hugo Awards for Best Novel and Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novellas.  The mother of two, Ms. Bujold lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Her most recent book is the July 2007 release, The Sharing Knife Volume Two: Legacy.

Vince Flynn

Minnesotan Vince Flynn was born in St. Paul in 1966.  Flynn was diagnosed with dyslexia in grade school and admits to being rather wary of the written word as a child.  After graduating as an economics major from the University of Saint Thomas, Flynn was hired for a job in marketing at Kraft foods.  He then attempted to join the Marine Corps but, a week before he was set to go to Officer Candidate School, his military career ended due to a medical disqualification.  While working in real estate, he began writing what would become his first political thriller, Term Limits.  His third book, The Third Option, immediately made the New York Times bestseller list and his success has continued to grow ever since.  He said about his decision to pursue writing rather than remaining a businessman: “I look back on it now and I couldn’t be happier with my decision, but at the time I remember a lot of people thought I was nuts.”  Flynn’s latest novel, Act of Treason, was published in 2006.

Harlan Coben - Featured Author of the Month

Harlan Coben was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1962. After graduating from Amherst College with a degree in political science, Coben worked in the travel industry. He now lives in New Jersey with his wife, Anne Armstrong-Coben MD, a pediatrician, and their four children. Winner of the Edgar Award, Shamus Award and Anthony Award -- the first author to win all three -- New York Times bestseller Coben's critically acclaimed novels have been called "poignant and insightful" (Los Angeles Times), "consistently entertaining" (Houston Chronicle), "superb" (Chicago Tribune) and "must reading" (Philadelphia Inquirer).  Coben is best known for his fast-paced thriller series featuring Myron Bolitar, a former basketball player turned sports agent who often finds himself investigating murders involving his clients.  His latest book is another bestseller, The Woods. 

Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez was born in New York City in 1950 but three months later, moved to the Dominican Republic, the native homeland of her parents.  The family lived there for ten years under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo and were heavily involved in an underground movement against him.  Their participation in the underground became too dangerous so in 1960, they returned to the United States, but her experiences during this time inspired Alvarez to write the novel, In the Time of the Butterflies.  Julia pursued writing while working as a teacher, and in 1991 she published her first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.  Today in addition to writing Alvarez is a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont and together with her husband operates Alta Gracia, a sustainable farm and literacy center in the Domincan Republic.

James Lee Burke

Before he became a best selling author, James Lee Burke showed amazing perseverance in the face of serious rejection.  Burke submitted his novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie 111 times before it was finally published by Louisiana State University Press.  Soon after its publication the novel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  Burke is best known for his Dave Robicheaux mystery series, which is set in Louisiana, not far from the Texas – Louisiana Gulf Coast region where he grew up.  His latest novel, The Tin Roof Blowdown, deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and is set for release this July.

Khaled Hosseini

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Khaled Hosseini was eleven years old when his diplomat father was transferred to Paris by the Afghan Foreign Ministry.  Four years later the family wished to return to Afghanistan but the invasion of the Soviets and the communist coup made the country too dangerous. Instead, the family came to the United States and were granted asylum.  Hosseini settled in California and graduated from the University of California – San Diego School of Medicine.  Hosseini was an internist for eight years from 1996 to 2004 and during this time he wrote his first novel, The Kite Runner.   This May, his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, will be published.  Besides writing, Hosseini spends his time as a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Lisa See

The noted author Lisa See grew up in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles.  She began her career writing the national bestseller On Golden Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family.  See focused the book on the story of her great-grandfather who had a fascinating life and became the “100-year godfather” of Los Angeles’ Chinatown.  Always fascinated by her Chinese heritage, Lisa began writing a series of books based on a fictional team of detectives who solve crimes in the United States and China.  See’s 2005 best-selling novel, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan tells the complex and emotional story of the friendship between two women growing up in 19th century China, when foot binding was the norm and women were seen to be useful only for bearing sons.  Lisa See is an active member of the Chinese community in Los Angeles and in addition to writing novels, is also a freelance journalist.  Her next book, Peony in Love, will be released this summer. 

Philippa Gregory - Featured Author of the Month

Born in Kenya in 1954, Philippa Gregory moved to England with her family, was educated in Bristol and studied with the National Council for the Training of Journalists in Cardiff.  She received her PhD in 18th-century literature at Edinburgh University.  She is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers with short stories, features and reviews, and is also a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4's Time Team.  Ms. Gregory lives in the North of England with her husband and two children. Her latest book is The Boleyn Inheritance.

Janet Evanovich

Janet Evanovich was born on April 22, 1943 in South River, New Jersey.  After compiling a large box of rejection letters, she had almost completely given up on the idea of writing and began working as an office temp.  But the best-selling mystery writer, who famously declared she spent most of her childhood in “LaLa Land,” finally got a call from an editor who wanted to buy one of her romance books for $2000.  After writing twelve romances under the pen name Steffie Hall, Evanovich shifted gears and started writing a light mystery series based on her bounty-hunter character Stephanie Plum.  Evanovich now lives in New Hampshire with her husband Pete.  Her husband, son and daughter run her business, Evanovich, Inc.

Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark was born in New York on Christmas Eve in 1927.  Her father died when she was ten years old, and she went to secretarial school after high school so that she would be able to get a job to help her mother pay the bills.  When she was 29, she sold her first short story after receiving forty rejections.  The first book Clark wrote was a fictionalized biography of George Washington entitled Aspire to the High Heavens.  Her next book, the suspense novel Where Are the Children?, was an instant hit and set her on the course of her best-selling career which has now spanned over thirty years.  Her latest book is the mystery I Heard That Song Before. 

Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen joined the Miami Herald in 1976, where he still works.  In 1979, he turned to investigative journalism concentrating on property development, exposing schemes to destroy Florida's natural beauty for the sake of profit.  His fiction mirrors his concerns as a journalist and Floridian.  His novels have been classified as environmental thrillers, although they can just as well be read as mainstream reflections of contemporary life.  The London Observer called him "America's finest satirical novelist," while Janet Maslin of the New York Times has compared him to Preston Sturges, Woody Allen, and S.J. Perelman.  Mr. Hiaasen's latest book is Nature Girl.

Patrick O'Brian - Featured Author of the Month

Patrick O'Brian was born on December 12, 1914 as Richard Patrick Russ.  He was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels.  Set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, these stories center on the friendship of Captain Jack Aubrey and an Irish–Catalan physician, naturalist and intelligence agent, Stephen Maturin. The 20-novel series is known for its well-researched and highly detailed portrayal of early 19th century life, as well as its authentic and evocative language.  Richard Snow of The New York Times referred to O’Brian’s works as “the best historical novels ever written.”  Patrick O’Brian died in January, 2000 at the age of 85.  What do you like most about this author?  Which of his books are your favorite?

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende was a native of Chile who was forced into exile following the assassination of her uncle, President Salvador Allende.   While in Chile, she briefly had a job translating romance novels from English to Spanish.  She was fired, however, for making unauthorized changes to the dialogue of the heroines to make them sound more intelligent, as well as for changing the Cinderella endings to let the heroines find more independence.

Allende begins writing all her books on January 8th (after lighting candles and meditating) because that is the date in 1981 when she started writing House of the Spirits as a letter to her dying grandfather.  Her works chronicle the human condition in all its joy and beauty, pain and sorrow.

Her latest book is Ines of My Soul.  Have you read it?  What do you think of her writing style?  What is your favorite book by Isabel Allende? 

Scott Turow

Chicago writer and lawyer Scott Turow has penned seven best-sellers.  His 2005 book, Ordinary Heroes, tells the story of a young man who researches his father’s past during World War II.  He finds that his father, who rescued his mother from a concentration camp, had previously been engaged to another woman, and as a JAG lawyer was called to make some complicated and difficult choices.   Like Turow’s other books, including Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof, Ordinary Heroes is an insider’s view of the legal system with exciting plot turns and rich characters.  What do like about Turow’s writing style?  If you were going to make Ordinary Heroes  a feature film or TV movie (as has been done with Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof) who would you cast?  Which of Turow’s other books would make good movies?

Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult has recently published her latest book, Nineteen Minutes.  Picoult fans can expect this new novel to explore controversial themes with her characteristic pull-no-punches style.  Her earlier books dealt with issues including children’s medical emancipation rights in My Sister’s Keeper, eugenics in Second Glance and teenage suicide pacts in The Pact.  What makes Picoult’s writing so compelling?  What techniques does she use to captivate you and pull you into her stories?  Are you looking forward to reading her newest book, Nineteen Minutes?

James Patterson

The Quickie is James Patterson's newest book, set for release this July.  What is it about Patterson that makes him a perpetual best selling author?   Is it the characters, the setting or the pace of his books?  Is it simply the style of the writing?  His website http://www.jamespatterson.com/ says he's sold over 130 million copies worldwide, and his sales continue to soar every year.  It also says he likes to read books by Michael Crichton, Sue Monk Kidd and Stuart Woods.   If you like Patterson, do you like these other authors as well?  Which of Patterson's books would you recommend reading first, and why?

Maeve Binchy

She’s at it again!  In early March one of Ireland’s most popular contemporary authors will release her new book, Whitethorn Woods.  It’s been three years since she wrote her last book, Nights of Rain and Stars, and Maeve Binchy fans have been waiting with baited breath for this new novel.  What I think fans appreciate most about Binchy is how finely she’s tuned the craft of storytelling.  Binchy’s novels and short stories usually focus on ordinary people who live ordinary lives in the villages and cities of Ireland, but it is her humorous, observant way of bringing these characters to life that will endear you to the stories she weaves so masterfully.  If you like well developed characters, honest portrayals of imperfect people trying to find their way in the world, and rich flavors of the Emerald Isle, then you have to try Maeve Binchy.  If you’ve never read her books before I’d suggest you start with Echoes or the Lilac Bus, but truly they’re all great!