Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images (2017)
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...
Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (1978)
Sample of authors
Bagley, Desmond
British author of thrillers born in Kendal, Cumbria (formerly Westmorland), in northwest England, an area known as the Lake District. His father was a miner who became ill and moved his family to Blackpool when Bagley was about twelve years old. There he ran a boarding house for actors. Desmond Bagley, who suffered from a bad stutter, left school when he was fourteen and worked in odd jobs at a...