Edmund Crispin
Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of (Robert) Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978). His first crime novel and musical composition were both accepted for publication while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford. After a brief spell of teaching, he became a full-time writer and composer (particularly of film music. He wrote the music for six of the Carry On films. But he was also well known for his concert and church music). He also edited science fiction anthologies, and became a regular crime fiction reviewer for The Sunday Times. His friends included Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Agatha Christie.
He had always been a heavy drinker and, unfortunately, there was a long gap in his writing during a time when he was suffering from alcohol problems. O
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Karen Swallow Prior
Karen Swallow Prior (PhD, SUNY Buffalo) is the award-winning author of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis; On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books; Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist; and Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me. She is a frequent speaker, a monthly columnist at Religion News Service, and has written for Christianity Today, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Vox. She is a Contributing Editor for Comment, a founding member of The Pelican Project, a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum, and a Senior Fellow at the International Alliance for Christian Education.
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W.E. Johns
Invariably known as Captain W.E. Johns, William Earl Johns was born in Bengeo, Hertfordshire, England. He was the son of Richard Eastman Johns, a tailor, and Elizabeth Johns (née Earl), the daughter of a master butcher. He had a younger brother, Russell Ernest Johns, who was born on 24 October 1895.
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He went to Hertford Grammar School where he was no great scholar but he did develop into a crack shot with a rifle. This fired his early ambition to be a soldier. He also attended evening classes at the local art school.
In the summer of 1907 he was apprenticed to a county municipal surveyor where he remained for four years and then in 1912 he became a sanitary inspector in Swaffham, Norfolk. Soon after taking up this appointment, his father died -
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R.A. Dick
R.A. Dick was the pseudonym of Josephine Leslie (Josephine Aimee Campbell Leslie), an Irish writer who wrote the 1945 novel The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. The book was made into a movie in 1947 starring Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders and Natalie Wood. It was also a television series in the 1960's. She also wrote The Devil and Mrs Devine.
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Sigrid Undset
Sigrid Undset was a Norwegian novelist whose powerful, psychologically rich works made her one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century. Best known for her medieval sagas Kristin Lavransdatter and The Master of Hestviken, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928 for her vivid portrayals of life in the Middle Ages, written with remarkable historical detail and emotional depth.
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Born in Denmark to Norwegian parents, Undset spent most of her life in Norway. After her father's early death, she had to forgo formal education and worked as a secretary while writing in her spare time. Her debut novel Fru Marta Oulie (1907) shocked readers with its opening confession of adultery and established her bold, realist style. -
Frances Brody
Frances Brody's highly-praised 1920s mysteries feature clever and elegant Kate Shackleton, First World War widow turned sleuth. Missing person? Foul play suspected? Kate's your woman. For good measure, she may bring along ex-policeman, Jim Sykes.
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Before turning to crime, Frances wrote for radio, television and theatre, and was nominated for a Time Out Award. She published four sagas, winning the HarperCollins Elizabeth Elgin Award in 2006.
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John Dickson Carr
AKA Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.
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John Dickson Carr was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1906. It Walks by Night, his first published detective novel, featuring the Frenchman Henri Bencolin, was published in 1930. Apart from Dr Fell, whose first appearance was in Hag's Nook in 1933, Carr's other series detectives (published under the nom de plume of Carter Dickson) were the barrister Sir Henry Merrivale, who debuted in The Plague Court Murders (1934). -
P.G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.
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An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by more recent writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English litera -
Dorothy L. Sayers
The detective stories of well-known British writer Dorothy Leigh Sayers mostly feature the amateur investigator Lord Peter Wimsey; she also translated the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.
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This renowned author and Christian humanist studied classical and modern languages.
Her best known mysteries, a series of short novels, set between World War I and World War II, feature an English aristocrat and amateur sleuth. She is also known for her plays and essays.
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Christianna Brand
Christianna Brand (December 17, 1907 - March 11, 1988) was a crime writer and children's author. Brand also wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Ann Ashe, Annabel Jones, Mary Roland, and China Thomson.
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She was born Mary Christianna Milne in 1907 in Malaya and spent her early years in India. She had a number of different occupations, including model, dancer, shop assistant and governess.
Her first novel, Death in High Heels, was written while Brand was working as a salesgirl. In 1941, one of her best-loved characters, Inspector Cockrill of the Kent County Police, made his debut in the book Heads You Lose. The character would go on to appear in seven of her novels. Green for Danger is Brand’s most famous novel. The whodunit, set in a World War 2 hos -
Margery Allingham
Aka Maxwell March.
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Margery Louise Allingham was born in Ealing, London in 1904 to a family of writers. Her father, Herbert John Allingham, was editor of The Christian Globe and The New London Journal, while her mother wrote stories for women's magazines as Emmie Allingham. Margery's aunt, Maud Hughes, also ran a magazine. Margery earned her first fee at the age of eight, for a story printed in her aunt's magazine.
Soon after Margery's birth, the family left London for Essex. She returned to London in 1920 to attend the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster), and met her future husband, Philip Youngman Carter. They married in 1928. He was her collaborator and designed the cover jackets for many of her books.
Margery's bre -
Rex Stout
Rex Todhunter Stout (1886–1975) was an American crime writer, best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives." Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the detective genius from 1934 (Fer-de-Lance) to 1975 (A Family Affair).
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The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Bouchercon 2000, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century. -
Josephine Tey
Josephine Tey was a pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh. Josephine was her mother's first name and Tey the surname of an English Grandmother. As Josephine Tey, she wrote six mystery novels featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Alan Grant.
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The first of these, The Man in the Queue (1929) was published under the pseudonym of Gordon Daviot , whose name also appears on the title page of another of her 1929 novels, Kif; An Unvarnished History. She also used the Daviot by-line for a biography of the 17th century cavalry leader John Graham, which was entitled Claverhouse (1937).
Mackintosh also wrote plays (both one act and full length), some of which were produced during her lifetime, under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot. The district of Daviot, near h -
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor (née Coles) was a popular English novelist and short story writer. Elizabeth Coles was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1912. She was educated at The Abbey School, Reading, and worked as a governess, as a tutor and as a librarian.
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In 1936, she married John William Kendall Taylor, a businessman. She lived in Penn, Buckinghamshire, for almost all her married life.
Her first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote's, was published in 1945 and was followed by eleven more. Her short stories were published in various magazines and collected in four volumes. She also wrote a children's book.
Taylor's work is mainly concerned with the nuances of "everyday" life and situations, which she writes about with dexterity. Her shrewd but affectionate portraya -
François Mauriac
François Charles Mauriac was a French writer and a member of the Académie française. He was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life." Mauriac is acknowledged to be one of the greatest Roman Catholic writers of the 20th century.
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Ross Macdonald
Ross Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar. He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer.
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Millar was born in Los Gatos, California, and raised in his parents' native Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, where he started college. When his father abandoned his family unexpectedly, Macdonald lived with his mother and various relatives, moving several times by his sixteenth year. The prominence of broken homes and domestic problems in his fiction has its roots in his youth.
In Canada, he met and married Margaret Sturm (Margaret Millar)in 1938. They had a daughter, Linda, who died in 1970.
He began his career writing stories fo -
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Mysteries of the well-known American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart include The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Door (1930).
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People often called this prolific author the American version of Agatha Christie. She is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it," though the exact phrase doesn't appear in her works, and she invented the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing.
Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues, and special articles. Many of her books and plays were adapted for movies, such as The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), and The Bat (1959). Critics most appreciated her murder mysteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ro... -
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Michael Gilbert
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Born in Lincolnshire in 1912, Michael Francis Gilbert was educated in Sussex before entering the University of London where he gained an LLB with honours in 1937. Gilbert was a founding member of the British Crime Writers Association, and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America - an achievement many thought long overdue. He won the Life Achievement Anthony Award at the 1990 Boucheron in London, and in 1980 he was knighted as a Commander in the Order of the British Empire. Gilbert made his debut in 1947 with Close Quarters, and since then has become recognized as one of our most versatile British mystery writers.
He was the fat -
Anthony Berkeley
Anthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer. He wrote under several pen-names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley Cox, and A. Monmouth Platts. One of the founders of The Detection Club
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Cox was born in Watford and was educated at Sherborne School and University College London.
He served in the Army in World War I and thereafter worked as a journalist, contributing a series of humourous sketches to the magazine 'Punch'. These were later published collectively (1925) under the Anthony Berkeley pseudonym as 'Jugged Journalism' and the book was followed by a series of minor comic novels such as 'Brenda Entertains' (1925), 'The Family Witch' (1925) and 'The Professor on Paws' (1926).
It was also in 1925 when he published, anonymously to b -
George Bellairs
AKA Hilary Landon
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George Bellairs is the nom de plume of Harold Blundell, a crime writer and bank manager born in Heywood, near Rochdale, Lancashire, who settled in the Isle of Man on retirement. He wrote more than 50 books, most featuring the series' detective Inspector Littlejohn. He also wrote four novels under the alternative pseudonym Hilary Landon. -
James Runcie
James Runcie is a British novelist, documentary film-maker, television producer, theatre director, and Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival.
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E.C.R. Lorac
Edith Caroline Rivett (who wrote under the pseudonyms E.C.R. Lorac, Carol Carnac, Carol Rivett, and Mary le Bourne) was a British crime writer. She was born in Hendon, Middlesex (now London). She attended the South Hampstead High School, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London.
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She was a member of the Detection Club. She was a very prolific writer, having written forty-eight mysteries under her first pen name, and twenty-three under her second. She was an important author of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. -
Carol Carnac
Edith Caroline Rivett (who wrote under the pseudonyms E.C.R. Lorac, Carol Carnac, Carol Rivett, and Mary le Bourne) was a British crime writer. She was born in Hendon, Middlesex (now London). She attended the South Hampstead High School, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London.
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She was a member of the Detection Club. She was a very prolific writer, having written forty-eight mysteries under her first pen name, and twenty-three under her second. She was an important author of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. -
James Runcie
James Runcie is a British novelist, documentary film-maker, television producer, theatre director, and Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival.
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François Mauriac
François Charles Mauriac was a French writer and a member of the Académie française. He was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life." Mauriac is acknowledged to be one of the greatest Roman Catholic writers of the 20th century.
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Anthony Berkeley
Anthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer. He wrote under several pen-names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley Cox, and A. Monmouth Platts. One of the founders of The Detection Club
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Cox was born in Watford and was educated at Sherborne School and University College London.
He served in the Army in World War I and thereafter worked as a journalist, contributing a series of humourous sketches to the magazine 'Punch'. These were later published collectively (1925) under the Anthony Berkeley pseudonym as 'Jugged Journalism' and the book was followed by a series of minor comic novels such as 'Brenda Entertains' (1925), 'The Family Witch' (1925) and 'The Professor on Paws' (1926).
It was also in 1925 when he published, anonymously to b -
Helen Eustis
Helen Eustis (1916-) is an American translator (from French) whose reputation rests on two novels: The Horizontal Man (1946), which received an Edgar, and The Fool Killer (1954). Eustis was born in Cincinnati Ohio and educated at Columbia University New York. She was married to Alfred Young Fisher and later Martin Harris, and worked briefly as a copywriter. She has also written a children's story, Mr Death and the Redheaded Woman. The Fool Killer was made into a horror movie staring Anthony Perkins in a role not unlike that of his Psycho character Norman Bates.
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David Dickinson
David Dickinson was born in Dublin. With an honours degree in Classics from Cambridge, David Dickinson joined the BBC, where he became editor of Newsnight and Panorama, as well as series editor for Monarchy, a three-part programme on the British royal family.
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Ernest Dudley
Born Vivian Ernest Coltman-Allen was born in Dudley near Wolverhampton, England but he grew up in Cookham, Berkshire where his father owned a public house and he was educated at Taplow School, which was run by nuns. The artist Stanley Spencer lived next door to Ernest and his friends included writers and actors such as Ivor Novello and Jack Buchanan and it was the latter who steered young Ernest toward acting (in later life Ernest was to write a stage show for him.)
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At 17 Ernest ran away to become an actor, joining a company performing Shakespeare in various Irish towns. Ernest was later to say he only went into the theatre to meet girls and in 1930 he married Jane Grahame, who for several years played one of the Lost Boys in 'Peter Pan'. Ja -
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Fulgencio Argüelles
Fulgencio Argüelles (Uriés, Aller, Asturias, 6 de enero de 1955) es un destacado escritor y psicólogo español cuya obra literaria, profundamente enraizada en su Asturias natal, combina una prosa evocadora con un agudo retrato de la psicología humana y la memoria colectiva. Su trayectoria, marcada por una sólida formación académica y un compromiso con la literatura, lo ha consolidado como una voz singular en el panorama literario español, con reconocimientos que incluyen prestigiosos premios como el Azorín, el Café Gijón y el Principado de Asturias.
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Nacido en una pequeña aldea asturiana, Argüelles se trasladó en su infancia a Cenera (Mieres), un lugar que impregnaría su obra con su atmósfera rural y su historia minera. Estudió Psicología en l -
Daisy Ashford
Daisy Ashford, full name Margaret Mary Julia Ashford (later Devlin) was an English writer who is most famous for writing The Young Visiters, a novella concerning the upper class society of late 19th century England, when she was just nine years old. The novella was published in 1919, preserving her juvenile spelling and punctuation. She wrote the title as "Viseters" in her manuscript, but it was published as "Visiters"
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Jacquetta Hawkes
Jacquetta Hawkes OBE FBA (5 August 1910 – 18 March 1996) was an English archaeologist and writer. She was the first woman to study the Archaeology & Anthropology degree course at the University of Cambridge. A specialist in prehistoric archaeology, she excavated Neanderthal remains at the Palaeolithic site of Mount Carmel with Yusra and Dorothy Garrod. She was a representative for the UK at UNESCO, and was curator of the "People of Britain" pavilion at the Festival of Britain.
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Her second husband was J.B. Priestley. -
Henrietta Leyser
An English historian: an expert on the history of medieval England, in particular the role of women.
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