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Portrait image of Josephine Bell Photo: Central Press/Hulton Archive via Getty Images (1956)

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Bell, Josephine

Josephine Bell is the pseudonym of the British writer and physician Doris Bell Ball, the author of radio plays, serials, a large number of short stories, one work of non-fiction as well as sixty-four novels, forty-five of which were detective novels or thrillers. She was born in Manchester as Doris Bell Collier. Bell's father, a doctor, died when she was seven. Her mother remarried a couple of...

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Portrait image of Ian Rankin Ian Rankin and Maj Sjöwall
Photo: Ola Erikson / Forflex

Sample of authors

Rankin, Ian

The Scottish crime writer Ian James Rankin was born in the coal mining town of Cardenden, Fife, where his father owned a grocery store. His mother worked in a school canteen. There were few books at home, and Rankin began to visit his local library as a child and began to write short stories as a teenager. He attended Denend Primary School in Cardendan and later Auchterderran Junior High at...

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