
Sample of authors
Parsons, Tony
English author and journalist, born and grew up as the only child in a working-class family in Romford, Essex. When Tony Parsons was five years old the family moved to Billericay, also in Essex, where he grew up. He attended Barstable Grammar School in Basildon, which he left at the age of 16 with rotten grades. In the years immediately after that, he had several short, menial jobs, including a...

Sample of authors
Gaboriau, Émile
While Edgar Allan Poe, the American author of short stories, is generally considered to be the father of modern crime fiction, Émile Gaboriau has been cited as the father of the crime novel. He was the first to use at least four defining elements of the genre: 1) He wrote briefly and succinctly compared to his contemporaries and his novels are driven by the crime plot. 2) His protagonists are ...