Mary Wesley
Mary Wesley, CBE was an English novelist. She reportedly worked in MI5 during World War II. During her career, she became one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 best-sellers in the last 20 years of her life.
She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and Haphazard House (1983), before publishing adult fiction. Since her first adult novel was published only in 1983, when she was 71, she may be regarded as a late bloomer. The publication of Jumping the Queue in 1983 was the beginning of an intensely creative period of Wesley's life. From 1982 to 1991, she wrote and delivered seven novels. While she aged from 70 to 79 she still showed the focus and
If you like author Mary Wesley here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (28)
-
Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. She has published 20 novels, her debut novel being If Morning Ever Comes in (1964). Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons , was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Buy books on Amazon -
Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks is a British novelist, journalist, and broadcaster best known for his acclaimed historical novels set in France, including The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong, and Charlotte Gray. Alongside these, he has written contemporary fiction, a James Bond continuation novel (Devil May Care), and a Jeeves homage (Jeeves and the Wedding Bells). A former literary editor and journalist, Faulks gained widespread recognition with Birdsong, which solidified his literary reputation. He has also appeared regularly on British media, notably as a team captain on BBC Radio 4's The Write Stuff, and authored the TV tie-in Faulks on Fiction. Honored as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and appointed CBE for his services to literature, Fa
Buy books on Amazon -
Penelope Lively
Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.
Buy books on Amazon
Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlis -
Olivia Manning
Olivia Manning CBE was a British novelist, poet, writer and reviewer. Her fiction and non-fiction, frequently detailing journeys and personal odysseys, were principally set in England, Ireland, Europe and the Middle East. She often wrote from her personal experience, though her books also demonstrate strengths in imaginative writing. Her books are widely admired for her artistic eye and vivid descriptions of place.
Buy books on Amazon
In August 1939 she married R.D. Smith ("Reggie"), a British Council lecturer posted in Bucharest, Romania, and subsequently in Greece, Egypt and Palestine as the Nazis over-ran Eastern Europe. Her experiences formed the basis for her best known work, the six novels making up "The Balkan Trilogy" and "The Levant Trilogy," known col -
Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford, styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years. She was born at 1 Graham Street (now Graham Place) in Belgravia, London, the eldest daughter of Lord Redesdale, and was brought up at Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire. She was the eldest of the six controversial Mitford sisters.
Buy books on Amazon
She is best remembered for her series of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published after 1945; but she also wrote four well-received, well-researched popular biographies (of Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great). She was one of -
Kevin Crossley-Holland
Kevin Crossley-Holland is an English poet and prize-winning author for children. His books include Waterslain Angels, a detective story set in north Norfolk in 1955, and Moored Man: A Cycle of North Norfolk Poems; Gatty's Tale, a medieval pilgrimage novel; and the Arthur trilogy (The Seeing Stone, At the Crossing-Places and King of the Middle March), which combines historical fiction with the retelling of Arthurian legend.
Buy books on Amazon
The Seeing Stone won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Smarties Prize Bronze Medal. The Arthur trilogy has won worldwide critical acclaim and has been translated into 21 languages.
Crossley-Holland has translated Beowulf from the Anglo-Saxon, and his retellings of traditional tales include The Penguin Book of No -
Connie Willis
Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She is one of the most honored science fiction writers of the 1980s and 1990s.
Buy books on Amazon
She has won, among other awards, ten Hugo Awards and six Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for All Seated on the Ground (August 2008). She was the 2011 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA).
She lives in Greeley, Colorado with her husband Courtney Willis, a professor of physics at the University of Northern Colorado. She also has one daughter, Cordelia.
Willis is known for her accessible prose and likable characters. She has written several pieces involving time travel by history students and faculty of the -
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.
Buy books on Amazon
The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chos -
Robert Goddard
In a writing career spanning more than twenty years, Robert Goddard's novels have been described in many different ways - mystery, thriller, crime, even historical romance. He is the master of the plot twist, a compelling and engrossing storyteller and one of the best known advocates for the traditional virtues of pace, plot and narrative drive.
Buy books on Amazon -
Tim Winton
Tim Winton was born in Perth, Western Australia, but moved at a young age to the small country town of Albany.
Buy books on Amazon
While a student at Curtin University of Technology, Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer. It went on to win The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981, and launched his writing career. In fact, he wrote "the best part of three books while at university". His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984. It wasn't until Cloudstreet was published in 1991, however, that his career and economic future were cemented.
In 1995 Winton’s novel, The Riders, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as was his 2002 book, Dirt Music. Both are currently being adapted for film. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles -
Natalia Ginzburg
Natalia Ginzburg (née Levi) was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize. Most of her works were also translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and United States. An activist, for a time in the 1930s she belonged to the Italian Communist Party. In 1983 she was elected to Parliament from Rome as an Independent.
Buy books on Amazon -
Margery Allingham
Aka Maxwell March.
Buy books on Amazon
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 -
Martin Edwards
Martin Edwards has been described by Richard Osman as ‘a true master of British crime writing.’ He has published twenty-three novels, which include the eight Lake District Mysteries, one of which was shortlisted for the Theakston’s Prize for best crime novel of the year and four books featuring Rachel Savernake, including the Dagger-nominated Gallows Court and Blackstone Fell, while Gallows Court and Sepulchre Street were shortlisted for the eDunnit award for best crime novel of the year. He is also the author of two multi-award-winning histories of crime fiction, The Life of Crime and The Golden Age of Murder. He has received three Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association and two Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America and has also b
Buy books on Amazon -
Jilly Cooper
Dame Jilly Cooper, OBE (born February 21, 1937) was an English author. She started her career as a journalist and wrote numerous works of non-fiction before writing several romance novels, the first of which appeared in 1975. She was most famous for writing the six blockbuster novels the Rutshire Chronicles.
Buy books on Amazon -
Juliet Nicolson
Juliet Nicolson is the author of 'The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm' and 'The Great Silence: Britain From the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age.' She read English at Oxford University and has worked in publishing in both the UK and the United States. She has two daughters, and lives with her husband in Sussex.
Buy books on Amazon -
Colette
Colette was the pen name of the French novelist and actress Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. She is best known, at least in the English-speaking world, for her novella Gigi, which provided the plot for a famous Lerner & Loewe musical film and stage musical. She started her writing career penning the influential Claudine novels of books. The novel Chéri is often cited as her masterpiece.
Buy books on Amazon -
Michael Dobbs
Michael Dobbs was born on the same day, in the same hour as Prince Charles in 1948.
Buy books on Amazon
He is the son of nurseryman Eric and his wife Eileen Dobbs and was educated at Hertford Grammar School and Christ Church, Oxford University. After graduating in 1971 he moved to the United States.
In the USA he attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, which he funded by a job as feature writer for the Boston Globe, where he worked as an editorial assistant and political feature writer from 1971 to 1975.
He graduated in 1975 with an M.A., M.A.L.D., and PhD in nuclear defence studies. His doctoral thesis was published as SALT on the Dragon's Tail. In 2007 he returned to Tufts where he gave the Alumni Saluta -
Barbara Pym
People know British writer Barbara Pym for her comic novels, such as Excellent Women (1952), of English life.
Buy books on Amazon
After studying English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, Barbara Pym served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during World War II. From 1950 to 1961, she published six novels, but her 7th was declined by the publisher due to a change in the reading public's tastes.
The turning point for Pym came with a famous article in the 1975 Times Literary Supplement in which two prominent names, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century. Pym and Larkin had kept up a private correspondence over a period of many years. Her comeback novel, Quartet in Autumn, was nominated for the Booker Prize. A -
Michael Ridpath
Before becoming a writer, Michael Ridpath used to work as a bond trader in the City of London. After writing several financial thrillers, which were published in over 30 languages, he began a crime series featuring the Icelandic detective Magnus Jonson. He has also written five stand-alone thrillers, the latest of which is The Diplomat’s Wife, published in February 2021. He lives in London.
Buy books on Amazon
And if you want a free copy of his novella, The Polar Bear Killing, and to sign up to his quarterly newsletter, just click this link: http://eepurl.com/dlzgFH -
Lissa Evans
After a brief career in medicine, and an even briefer one in stand-up, Lissa Evans became a comedy producer, first in radio and then in television. Her first novel, Spencer's List, was published in 2002, and since then she has written three more books for adults (two of them longlisted for the Orange/Baileys Prize) and two for children (the first of them shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal). Her two most recent books for adults were set in London during the Second World War; one of them, 'Their Finest Hour and a Half' has now been made into a film entitled 'Their Finest', starring Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy
Buy books on Amazon -
Clare Flynn
Clare Flynn is the author of eighteen historical novels and a collection of short stories. She is the 2020 winner of the UK Selfies Adult Fiction prize for her best-selling novel The Pearl of Penang, was shortlisted for the RNA Industry Awards Indie Champion of the Year for 2021 and won the award in 2022.
Buy books on Amazon
Clare lives in Eastbourne. on the south coast of the UK. She is a fluent Italian speaker and loves spending time in Italy. In her spare time she likes to quilt, paint and travel often and widely as possible.
Clare Flynn is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an active member of The Romantic Novelists Association, The Hostrical Writers Association, The Alliance of Independent Authors and The Society of Authors. More information about her -
Rose Tremain
Dame Rose Tremain is an acclaimed English novelist and short story writer, celebrated for her distinctive approach to historical fiction and her focus on characters who exist on the margins of society. Educated at the Sorbonne and the University of East Anglia, where she later taught creative writing and served as Chancellor, Tremain has produced a rich body of work spanning novels, short stories, plays, and memoir. Influenced by writers such as William Golding and Gabriel García Márquez, her narratives often blend psychological depth with lyrical prose.
Buy books on Amazon
Among her many honors, she has received the Whitbread Award for Music and Silence, the Orange Prize for The Road Home, and the National Jewish Book Award for The Gustav Sonata. She was sho -
Sarah Helm
Sarah Helm (born 2 November 1956) is a British journalist and non-fiction writer. She worked for The Sunday Times and The Independent in the 1980s and 1990s. Her first book A Life in Secrets, detailing the life of the secret agent Vera Atkins, was published in 2005.
Buy books on Amazon -
John O'Hara
American writer John Henry O'Hara contributed short stories to the New Yorker and wrote novels, such as BUtterfield 8 (1935) and Ten North Frederick (1955).
Buy books on Amazon
Best-selling works of John Henry O'Hara include Appointment in Samarra . People particularly knew him for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara, a keen observer of social status and class differences, wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O... -
Rosamond Lehmann
Rosamond Nina Lehmann was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, as the second daughter of Rudolph Lehmann and his wife Alice Davis, a New Englander. Her father Rudolph Chambers Lehmann was a liberal MP, and editor of the Daily News. John Lehmann (1907-1989) was her brother; one of her two sisters was the famous actress Beatrix Lehmann.
Buy books on Amazon
In 1919 she went to Girton College, University of Cambridge to read English Literature, an unusual thing for a woman to do at that time. In December 1923 she married Leslie Runciman (later 2nd Viscount Runciman of Doxford) (1900-1989), and the couple went to live in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was an unhappy marriage, and they separated in 1927 and were divorced later that year.
In 1927, Lehmann published her first -
Julian Rathbone
Julian Christopher Rathbone was born in 1935 in Blackheath, southeast London. His great-uncle was the actor and great Sherlock Holmes interpreter Basil Rathbone, although they never met.
Buy books on Amazon
The prolific author Julian Rathbone was a writer of crime stories, mysteries and thrillers who also turned his hand to the historical novel, science fiction and even horror — and much of his writing had strong political and social dimensions.
He was difficult to pigeonhole because his scope was so broad. Arguably, his experiment with different genres and thus his refusal to be typecast cost him a wider audience than he enjoyed. Just as his subject matter changed markedly over the years, so too did his readers and his publishers.
Among his more than 40 books t -
Michael Dobbs
Michael Dobbs was born on the same day, in the same hour as Prince Charles in 1948.
Buy books on Amazon
He is the son of nurseryman Eric and his wife Eileen Dobbs and was educated at Hertford Grammar School and Christ Church, Oxford University. After graduating in 1971 he moved to the United States.
In the USA he attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, which he funded by a job as feature writer for the Boston Globe, where he worked as an editorial assistant and political feature writer from 1971 to 1975.
He graduated in 1975 with an M.A., M.A.L.D., and PhD in nuclear defence studies. His doctoral thesis was published as SALT on the Dragon's Tail. In 2007 he returned to Tufts where he gave the Alumni Saluta -
Juliet Nicolson
Juliet Nicolson is the author of 'The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm' and 'The Great Silence: Britain From the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age.' She read English at Oxford University and has worked in publishing in both the UK and the United States. She has two daughters, and lives with her husband in Sussex.
Buy books on Amazon