
Sample of authors
Ball, John
John Dudley Ball was an American author, editor and music critic whose award-winning crime novel In the Heat of the Night (1965), adapted for the screen starring Sidney Poitier, was much discussed at the time. The film was awarded five Academy Awards in 1967.
John Dudley Ball was born in Schenectady, New York. His family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, soon afterwards. His father was a...

Sample of authors
Beckett, Simon
English author whose crime novels have become more popular in other countries – including Scandinavia and Germany – than at home. Simon Beckett was born in a working-class family in Sheffield, and graduated with a B.A. in English from Sheffield Polytechnic (now Hallam University) and subsequently gained an M.A. at Newcastle University. He then worked for several years as a janitor and for a whi...