Roy Blount Jr.

Roy Blount Jr. is the author of twenty-three books. The first, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, was expanded into About Three Bricks Shy . . . and the Load Filled Up. It is often called one of the best sports books of all time. His subsequent works have taken on a range of subjects, from Duck Soup, to Robert E. Lee, to what cats are thinking, to how to savor New Orleans, to what it’s like being married to the first woman president of the United States.

Blount is a panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!, an ex-president of the Authors Guild, a usage consultant for the American Heritage Dictionary, a New York Public Library Literary Lion, and a member of both the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the band the Rock Bottom Remainder

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Nicholas Ostler

Nicholas Ostler is a British scholar and author. Ostler studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received degrees in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and economics. He later studied under Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in linguistics and Sanskrit.

His 2005 book Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World documents the spread of language throughout recorded human history.

His 2007 book Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin looks specifically at the language of the Romans, both before and after the existence of their Empire. The story focuses on the rise, spread, and dominance of Latin, both among other languages of the Italian peninsula in the early part of the 1st millennium BC and amon
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Groucho Marx

Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx, was an American comedian and film star. He is famed as a master of wit. He made 15 feature films with his siblings, the Marx Brothers, and also had a successful solo career, most notably as the host of the radio and television game show, You Bet Your Life. He had a distinctive image, which included a heavy greasepaint moustache and eyebrows, and glasses.

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David J. Peterson

My name is David Peterson, and I'm a language creator and writer. I'm the author of Living Language Dothraki, The Art of Language Invention, and Create Your Own Secret Language. I've been creating languages for television shows and movies since 2009. Some of the productions I've worked on (and languages I've created for them) are: HBO's Game of Thrones (Dothraki, High Valyrian, Astapori Valyrian); Syfy's Defiance (Castithan, Irathient, Indojisnen, Kinuk'aaz); Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem (Méníshè); Netflix's The Witcher (Hen Linge); the CW's The 100 (Trigedasleng); HBO's House of the Dragon (High Valyrian); and Legendary's Dune (Chakobsa).
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Robert D. Putnam

Robert David Putnam is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. Putnam developed the influential two-level game theory that assumes international agreements will only be successfully brokered if they also result in domestic benefits. His most famous work, Bowling Alone, argues that the United States has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences. In March 2015, he published a book called Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis that looked at issues of inequality of opportunity i
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Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. He is seen as crucial i
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John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981; he also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. Due in part to these failures, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31.

Toole was born to a middle-class family in New Orleans. From a young age, his mother, Thelma, taught him an appreciation of culture. She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life, and at times they had a difficult relationship. With his mother's encouragement, Toole became a s
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Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender is the author of the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. Her work has been widely anthologized and has been translated into ten languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Harlan Ellison

Harlan Jay Ellison (1934-2018) was a prolific American writer of short stories, novellas, teleplays, essays, and criticism.

His literary and television work has received many awards. He wrote for the original series of both The Outer Limits and Star Trek as well as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; edited the multiple-award-winning short story anthology series Dangerous Visions; and served as creative consultant/writer to the science fiction TV series The New Twilight Zone and Babylon 5.

Several of his short fiction pieces have been made into movies, such as the classic "The Boy and His Dog".
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Karin Slaughter

Karin Slaughter is the author of twenty-five instant NEW YORK TIMES bestselling novels, including the Edgar–nominated COP TOWN and standalone novels THE GOOD DAUGHTER, PRETTY GIRLS, and GIRL, FORGOTTEN. She is published in 120 countries with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. PIECES OF HER is a #1 Netflix original series starring Toni Collette. The Will Trent Series is on ABC (and streaming on Hulu in the U.S and Disney+ internationally). THE GOOD DAUGHTER and FALSE WITNESS are in development for film/tv. Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta.

Facebook: Facebook.com/AuthorKarinSlaug
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Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester, OBE, is a British writer, journalist and broadcaster who resides in the United States. Through his career at The Guardian, Winchester covered numerous significant events including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal. As an author, Simon Winchester has written or contributed to over a dozen nonfiction books and authored one novel, and his articles appear in several travel publications including Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic.

In 1969, Winchester joined The Guardian, first as regional correspondent based in Newcastle upon Tyne, but was later assigned to be the Northern Ireland Correspondent. Winchester's time in Northern Ireland placed him around several events of The Troubles, includi
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Dan Baum

Dan Baum was born in Orange, New Jersey (or South Orange, New Jersey) to Seymour and Audrey Bernice (Goldberger) Baum. His father, Seymour, was an executive with Colgate-Palmolive. His mother, Audrey Bernice (Goldberger) Baum, was a social worker. Raised in South Orange, Baum graduated from Columbia High School in 1974. He graduated from New York University in 1978.

Over the years he worked for various publications as a journalist. He was staff writer for The New Yorker, for which he covered Hurricane Katrina. In addition to that famous magazine he was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also freelanced for various publications such as Rolling Stone, Wired, Playboy
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Gary Krist

Gary Krist is the author of four previous narrative nonfiction books: The White Cascade, City of Scoundrels, Empire of Sin, and The Mirage Factory. He has also written three novels and two short story collections. A widely published journalist and book reviewer, Krist has been the recipient of the Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas gold medal for travel journalism, a fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Public Scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His newest book--Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco--will be published in March of 2025.
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Paul Beatty

Paul Beatty (born 1962 in Los Angeles) is a contemporary African-American author. Beatty received an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College and an MA in psychology from Boston University. He is a 1980 graduate of El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, California.

In 1990, Paul Beatty was crowned the first ever Grand Poetry Slam Champion of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. One of the prizes for winning that championship title was the book deal which resulted in his first volume of poetry, Big Bank Takes Little Bank. This would be followed by another book of poetry Joker, Joker, Deuce as well as appearances performing his poetry on MTV and PBS (in the series The United States of Poetry). In 1993, he was awarded a grant from the Foundati
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Simon Brett

Simon Brett is a prolific British writer of whodunnits.

He is the son of a Chartered Surveyor and was educated at Dulwich College and Wadham College, Oxford, where he got a first class honours degree in English.

He then joined the BBC as a trainee and worked for BBC Radio and London Weekend Television, where his work included 'Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and 'Frank Muir Goes Into ...'.

After his spells with the media he began devoting most of his time to writing from the late 1970s and is well known for his various series of crime novels.

He is married with three children and lives in Burpham, near Arundel, West Sussex, England. He is the current president of the Detection Club.
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Nicholas Ostler

Nicholas Ostler is a British scholar and author. Ostler studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received degrees in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and economics. He later studied under Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in linguistics and Sanskrit.

His 2005 book Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World documents the spread of language throughout recorded human history.

His 2007 book Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin looks specifically at the language of the Romans, both before and after the existence of their Empire. The story focuses on the rise, spread, and dominance of Latin, both among other languages of the Italian peninsula in the early part of the 1st millennium BC and amon
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Rick Telander

Happy to be an author. Happier to have readers! Let me know if you'd like me to talk about anything from my books. I think I remember most of them. (joke)
I went to Richwoods High School in Peoria, got a football scholarship to Northwestern University, and started writing for money (mere pittance) after graduation in 1971.
If you need to know more, let me know. I can go on and on. PS-- I once scored 108 points in a men's league game in Bridgeport, Chicago. Six-foot and under league (I'm, a little over 6-1), four-on-four, gym (McGuane Park) so tiny you had to put your foot against the wall to take the ball out. Henry's Bait Shop (us) vs. Seemo's Schnozzles (all short and mostly drunk). Scorer ran out of room in book. FYI.
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David Benioff

David Benioff worked as a nightclub bouncer in San Francisco, a radio DJ in Wyoming and an English teacher/wrestling coach in Brooklyn before selling his first novel, The 25th Hour, in 2000.

He later wrote the screenplay for Spike Lee’s adaptation of 25th Hour starring Edward Norton and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. In 2005, Viking Press published Benioff’s collection of short stories, When the Nines Roll Over.

Benioff’s screenwriting credits include Troy (2004), directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and Stay (2005), directed by Marc Forster, The Kite Runner (2007). Jim Sheridan produced Benioff’s screenplay Brothers, and Hugh Jackman reprised his role as the clawed mutant in Benioff’s Wolverine. He is also screenwriter and executive producer of Game of
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Ace Atkins

Ace Atkins is the author of twenty-eight books, including eleven Quinn Colson novels, the first two of which, The Ranger and The Lost Ones, were nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel (he has a third Edgar nomination for his short story "Last Fair Deal Gone Down"). He is the author of nine New York Times-bestselling novels in the continuation of Robert B. Parker's Spenser series. Before turning to fiction, he was a correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times and a crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune, and he played defensive end for Auburn University football.
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Louise Penny

LOUISE PENNY is the author of the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail bestselling series of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels. She has won numerous awards, including a CWA Dagger and the Agatha Award (seven times), and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. In 2017, she received the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. Louise lives in a small village south of Montréal.
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David J. Peterson

My name is David Peterson, and I'm a language creator and writer. I'm the author of Living Language Dothraki, The Art of Language Invention, and Create Your Own Secret Language. I've been creating languages for television shows and movies since 2009. Some of the productions I've worked on (and languages I've created for them) are: HBO's Game of Thrones (Dothraki, High Valyrian, Astapori Valyrian); Syfy's Defiance (Castithan, Irathient, Indojisnen, Kinuk'aaz); Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem (Méníshè); Netflix's The Witcher (Hen Linge); the CW's The 100 (Trigedasleng); HBO's House of the Dragon (High Valyrian); and Legendary's Dune (Chakobsa).
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Alan Bradley

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

With an education in electronic engineering, Alan worked at numerous radio and television stations in Ontario, and at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in Toronto, before becoming Director of Television Engineering in the media centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, where he remained for 25 years before taking early retirement to write in 1994.

He became the first President of the Saskatoon Writers, and a founding member of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. His children's stories were published in The Canadian Children's Annual, and his short story, Meet Miss Mullen, was the first recipient of the Saskatchewan Writers
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Sam Kean

Sam Kean is the New York Times-bestselling author of seven books. He spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a kid, and now lives in Washington, D.C. His stories have appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Slate, among other places, and his work has been featured on NPR’s “Radiolab”, “Science Friday”, and “All Things Considered.” The Bastard Brigade was a “Science Friday” book of the year, while Caesar’s Last Breath was the Guardian science book of the year.
from SamKean.com

(Un)Official Bio:
Sam Kean gets called Sean at least once a month. He grew up in South Dakota, which means more to him than it probably should. He’s a fast reader but a very slow eater. He went to coll
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Andrew Leland

Andrew Leland’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. From 2013-2019, he hosted and produced The Organist, an arts and culture podcast, for KCRW; he has also produced pieces for Radiolab and 99 Percent Invisible. He has been an editor at The Believer since 2003. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and son.

Author Photo: © Gregory Halpern
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Keith Houston

Keith Houston is the author of Shady Characters, The Book, Empire of the Sum and Face with Tears of Joy. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Lapham's Quarterly, BBC Culture, and on Time.com. He lives in Linlithgow, Scotland, with his family.
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Jason Pargin

Jason Pargin is a New York Times bestselling author who used to write under the pseudonym David Wong. His first novel, John Dies at the End, became a feature film in 2012. He is also the author of the Zoey Ashe series, currently in development for TV.

Jason was also the Executive Editor at Cracked.com from 2007 until 2020, when he left to become a full time novelist. He has a dog.
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Patricia Daniels Cornwell

see: Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell's first title: Postmortem was published under Patricia Daniels Cornwell

Various editions of her other titles are published under Patricia D. Cornwell, which are also found here.

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