
Sample of authors
King, Stephen
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine. His father, Donald Pollock, a vacuum cleaner salesman, sailor and philanderer (King has a half-sister in Brazil), went through a number of aliases before he changed his surname to King. When Stephen was two years old, his father went out to buy cigarettes and never came back. Stephen grew up in poor circumstances with his mother Ruth and his...

Sample of authors
McCall Smith, Alexander
The British author Alexander McCall Smith – called Sandy by family and friends – was born in Bulawayo in the then British colony of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) as the youngest of four children to a British public prosecutor and his wife. He was schooled at the Christian Brothers College in Bulawayo before travelling to Scotland in 1966 to start studying Law at the University of Edi...