A pseudonym of Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, born in Courbevoie, near Paris. His father was an insurance company official and his mother sold laces, but the family was poor. Céline’s way to writing and his literary breakthrough with Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit) in 1932 was anything but straight. He enlisted early on, and was in the initial phase of the First World Wa...

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American detective writer, born in St. Mary's County in Maryland. He grew up in Baltimore where his family moved when he was seven years old. Dashiell Hammett dropped out of school when thirteen and got on with odd jobs before ending up a private detective at Pinkertons. He worked as a detective primarily in San Francisco and then used his experiences in his novels. During the First World War,...

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American author of German descent born as Anthony Grove Hillerman in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma. Tony Hillerman grew up on a farm; his father ran the village shop and his mother was a nurse. He attended a boarding school with mainly Native American children from the Potawatomie tribe between 1930 and 1938. He graduated from Konowa High School in 1942, in 1948 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts...

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The English author Sharon Bolton was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, as the oldest of three girls. She grew up in Darwen and attended Darwen Moorland High School. She decided that she wanted to pursue a career in dancing or acting, so she read drama at Loughborough University in Leicestershire. She later worked in PR and advertising before reading business administration at Warwick University,...

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