
Sample of authors
Christie, Agatha
English detective writer, born as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in an affluent middle-class home in Torquay in Devon County. Her father, who was an American from New York, died already in 1901, and Agatha was therefore brought up by her English mother while receiving her education in the home. When sixteen, she was sent to Paris to study singing, but it soon turned out that her voice was not...

Sample of authors
Beckett, Simon
English author whose crime novels have become more popular in other countries – including Scandinavia and Germany – than at home. Simon Beckett was born in a working-class family in Sheffield, and graduated with a B.A. in English from Sheffield Polytechnic (now Hallam University) and subsequently gained an M.A. at Newcastle University. He then worked for several years as a janitor and for a whi...