
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
Paretsky, Sara
The American author Sara Paretsky was a leading proponent – alongside Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and others – during a period in the 1980s and ‘90s when crime fiction by and about women came to the fore in the United States. She was born in Ames, Iowa, but moved with her family to Kansas in 1951 where they were harassed by the authorities on account of being Jewish. Her scientist father was a stri...