est known today for his exciting blockbuster novels, Sidney Sheldon is the author of The Best Laid Plans, Nothing Lasts Forever, The Stars Shine Down, The Doomsday Conspiracy, Memories of Midnight, The Sands of Time, Windmills of the Gods, If Tomorrow Comes, Master of the Game, Rage of Angels, Bloodline, A Stranger in the Mirror, and The Other Side of Midnight. Almost all have been number-one international bestsellers. His first book, The Naked Face, was acclaimed by the New York Times as "the best first mystery of the year" and received an Edgar Award. Most of his novels have become major feature films or TV miniseries, and there are more than 275 million copies of his books in print throughout the world.

Before he became a novelist, Sidney Sheldon had already won a Tony Award for Broadway's Redhead and an Academy Award for The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer. He has written the screenplays for twenty-three motion pictures, including Easter Parade (with Judy Garland) and Annie Get Your Gun. In addition, he penned six other Broadway hits and created three long-running television series, including Hart to Hart and I Dream of Jeannie, which he also produced. A writer who has delighted millions with his award-winning plays, movies, novels, and television shows, Sidney Sheldon reigns as one of the most popular storytellers of all time.

1937 Sheldon arrives in Hollywood where he finds work at Universal Studios as a script reader for $17.00 a week. With collaborator, Ben Roberts, he also writes a number of "B" movies.

1941 Sheldon joins the Air Force serving in World War II as a pilot.

1942 Sheldon has three musical hits simultaneously playing on Broadway - the revised "Merry Widow," "Jackpot" and "Dream with Music".

Mid-'40's Sheldon returns to Hollywood where he begins a long career as a successful screenwriter with MGM and Paramount Studios.

1948 Sheldon wins an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for "The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer" starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The film also wins the 1947 Box Office Blue Ribbon Award for its screenplay.

Sheldon is awarded the Screen Writers Guild Award for Best Musical for "Easter Parade," starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. He receives the Box Office Blue Ribbon Award for its screenplay, as well.

1951 Sheldon receives the Screen Writers Guild Award for Best Musical for "Annie Get Your Gun," starring Betty Hutton and Howard Keel.

1959 Returning briefly to Broadway, Sheldon wins a Tony Award as co-author of the musical, "Redhead," starring Gwen Verdon.

1963 Sheldon begins a new facet in his writing career with the creation of the "Patty Duke" television show. He writes an unprecedented 78 scripts in three years for the series.

1964 Sheldon creates, produces and writes "I Dream of Jeannie" in his co-production capacity with Screen Gems. He writes all but two dozen scripts in five years, using three pseudonyms, while simultaneously writing scripts for "The Patty Duke Show."

1967 Sheldon receives an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy for the hit series "I Dream of Jeannie."

1969 Sheldon's first novel, The Naked Face, is published and wins an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

1974 Sheldon's second book, The Other Side of Midnight, hits the New York Times bestseller list, going on to hold the paper's then record of 52 weeks on the charts.

1975 Sheldon's A Stranger in the Mirror is published and becomes a bestseller in both hard and soft cover.

1977 Sheldon's fourth novel, Bloodline becomes a #1 bestseller.

1980 Rage of Angels is published and goes to #1 on the bestseller lists the week before its official publication date, staying at the top for 18 weeks and on the lists for 42 weeks.

1982 Sheldon's sixth novel, Master of the Game, debuts at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and stays there for 11 weeks.

1983 "Sidney Sheldon Day" is celebrated by Mayoral proclamation in his hometown of Chicago.

1986 Another Sheldon #1 bestseller, If Tomorrow Comes, is published.

1987 Advance orders for Sheldon's eighth novel, Windmills of the Gods, are the heaviest in publisher, William Morrow's history. The novel debuts at #1 two days before its official release date.

1988 Sheldon's novel, The Sands of Time, debuts on the New York Times bestseller list before its official release date. Advance orders exceed one million copies.

Sheldon receives a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1990 Sheldon's tenth novel, Memories of Midnight, a sequel to his first blockbuster hit, has a record first printing for publisher, William Morrow of 1.1 million copies.

1991 Sheldon's international bestseller, The Doomsday Conspiracy, is published.

1992 The Stars Shine Down is published and sets record breaking sales for the author.

1993 Sheldon receives the prestigious Prix Literature 1993 at the Deauville Film Festival.

1994 Sidney Sheldon publishes his thirteenth novel, Nothing Lasts Forever, a dazzling novel that sweeps readers into the frenetic world of a big San Francisco hospital.

Sheldon is named National Spokesman for Libraries For The Future.

1995 Sheldon is honored by libraries across the country, the American Library Association and The Los Angeles Public Library, with their Honorable Citizen Award.

Sidney Sheldon's fourteenth novel, Morning, Noon & Night is published.

1997 Sheldon is honored by The Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Translated Author in the World.

The Best Laid Plans is published with an initial printing of one million copies.

Best Laid Plans hits New York Times Bestseller list

1998 Tell Me Your Dreams is published and hits the New York Times Bestseller list.

1999 Sidney Sheldon honored with "Great Authors of the Twentieth Century" Stamp and it is declared Sidney Sheldon Day by Mayor of Beverly Hills

2000 The Sky is Falling published.

2004 Are You Afraid of the Dark? published.

2005 Sidney Sheldon's memoir, The Other Side of Me, is published.

2007 Sidney Sheldon passed away on January 30, 2007. His wife, Alexandra, was by his side.

Very prolific British author of mystery novels and short stories, creator of Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective, and Miss Jane Marple. Christie wrote more than 70 detective novels under the surname of her first husband, Colonel Archibald Christie. She also published a series of romances and a children's book.

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, in the county of Devon, as the daughter of Frederick Alvah Miller, an American with a moderate private income, and Clarissa Miller. Her father died when she was a child. Christie was educated home, where her mother encouraged her to write from very early age. At sixteen she was sent to school in Paris where she studied singing and piano. Christie was an accomplished pianist but her stage fright and shyness prevented her from pursuing a career in music. In her books Christie seldom referred to music, although her detectives, Poirot and Miss Marple, show interest in opera and Poirot sings in THE A.B.C. MURDERS (1936) a World War I song. When Christie's mother took her to Cairo for a winter, she wrote there a novel. Encouraged by Eden Philpotts, neighbor and friend in Torquay, she devoted herself into writing and had short stories published.

In 1914 Christie married Archibald Christie, an officer in the Flying Royal Corps; their daughter, Rosalind, was born in 1919. During World War I she worked in a Red Cross Hospital in Torquayas a hospital dispenser, which gave her a knowledge of poisons. It was to be useful when she started writing mysteries. Christie's first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective, who appeared in more than 40 books, the last of which was CURTAIN (1975). The Christies bought a house and named it 'Styles' after the first novel.

Poirot was an amiably comic character with egg-shaped head, eccentric whose friend Captain Hastings represents the "idiot narrator" - familiar from Sherlock Holmes stories. Poirot draws conclusions from observing people's conduct and from objects around him, creating a chain of facts that finally reveal the murderer. '"He tapped his forehead. "These little gray cells. It is 'up to them' - as you say over here."' Behind the apparently separate details is always a pattern, which only Poirot is able to see.

Miss Marple, an elderly spinster, was a typical English character, but when Poirot used logic and rational methods, Marple relied on her feminine sensitivity and empathy to solve crimes. She was born and lived in the village of St. Mary Mead. Both Poirot and Marple did not have any family life, but Poirot also travelled much. Marple was featured in 17 novels, the first being MURDER AT THE VICARAGE (1930) and the last SLEEPING MURDER (1977). She was reportedly based on the author's own grandmother. Miss Marple made her first screen appearance in 1961 in Murder She Said, starring Margaret Rutherford. It was based on the novel 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON (1957). It was followed by Murder at the Galop (1963), Murder Ahoy (1964), and Murder Most Foul (1964), all directed by George Pollock. The BBC TV series starring Joan Hickson ran 1984-87. Gracie Fields played Miss Marple on television in an adaptation of A Murder Is Announced (1956).

Poirot, a former policeman, was forced to flee his country after the German invasion of Belgium in 1914. His assistant Captain Hastings married in the early 1930s and Poirot settled to London's Whitehaven Mansions. Poirot is short - only five feet four inches tall. He has waxed moustache, egg-shaped head and small feet. Poirot first appeared on screen in Alibi (1931). It was based on THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD (1926), which was partly inspired by Anton Chekhov's novel The Shooting Party (1884-1885). "Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend," Christie wrote in it. With these kind of insights in motives and methods of a murder Christie proved that she could have been a competent teacher at police academies. Peter Ustinov played Poirot in Death on the Nile (1978), Evil under the Sun (1982), and Appointment with Death (1988). David Suchet was Poirot in the UK television series (1989-91). In Murder by the Book (1986) Ian Holm's Poirot investigated his own murder. Tony Randall played Poirot in Frank Tashlin's unorthodox adaptation The Alphabet Murders (1965), in which Anita Ekberg galloped on horseback through Kensington Gardens.

In 56 years Christie wrote 66 detective novels, among the best of which are The Murder of Roger Acroyd, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1934), DEATH ON THE NILE (1937), and TEN LITTLE NIGGERS (1939). The film version of Ten Little Niggers (1945, US title: And Then There Were None) by the French director René Clair, starring Walter Huston and Barry Fitzgerald, is one of the most faithful Christie adaptations. In addition to these mysteries, Christie wrote her autobiography (1977), and several plays, including THE MOUSETRAP, which run more than 30 years continuously in London, and had 8 862 performances at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. The play was based on the short story 'Three Blind Mice', and was produced in 1952 in Nottingham and London. The original company at the Ambassadors Theatre included Richard Attenborough as the detective.

Christie's marriage broke up in 1926. Archie Christie, who worked in the City, announced that he had fallen in love with a younger woman, Nancy Neele. In the same year Christie's beloved mother died. After hearing that her husband had left for Miss Neele's house, Christie disappeared for a time. "I would gladly give £500 if I could only hear where my wife is," said Colonel Christie. The story of her real life (love?) adventure in the 1926, when she lived in a Harrowgate hotel under the name Mrs. Neele, was basis for the film Agatha. It was directed in 1978 by Michael Apted. In title role was Vanessa Redgrave. Christie's divorce was finalized in 1928, and two years later she married the archaeologist Max Mallowan. She had met him on her travels in Near East in 1927, and accompanied him on his excavations of sites in Syria and Iraq. Later Christie used these exotic settings in her novels MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA (1936) and Death on the Nile (1937). Her own archeological adventures were recounted in COME TELL ME HOW YOU LIVE (1946). Mallowan was Catholic and fourteen years her junior; he became one of the most prominent archaeologist of his generation. Of her marriage the writer told reporters: "An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her." Mallowan worked in Iraq in the 1950s but returnmed to England, when Christie's health grew weaker. His most famous book was Nimrud and its Remains.

Christie's most prolific period began in the late 1920s. During the 1930s he published four non-series mystery novels, fourteen Poirot novels, two Marple novels, two Superintendent Battle books, a book of stories featuring Harley Quin and another featuring Mr. Parken Pyne, an additional Maru Westmacott book, and two original plays. In 1936 she published the first of six psychological romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. After visiting Luxor in 1937, where Christie saw Howard Carter, she wrote the play AKHNATON, which was not published until 1973. It dramatized the fate of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaton, who tried to replace the old gods with monotheism, and Nefertiti, his wife. Curiously, the Finnish writer Mika Waltari, who gained later international fame with his historical novel The Egyptian (1945), wrote also in the same year a play about the same king, Akhnaton, auringosta syntynyt (1937). Christie's play was prodeced in New York as Akhnaton and Nefertiti in 1979 and next year in London.

During WW II Christie worked in the dispensary of University College Hospital in London. She also produced twelve completed novels. After the war she continued to write prolifically, also gaining success on the stage and in the cinema. Witness for the Prosecution, for example, was chosen the best foreign play of the 1954-55 season by the New York Drama Critics Circle. Play had opened in London in October 1953 and by December 1954, it was on Broadway. With Max Mallowan she traveled in 1947 and 1949 to expeditions to Nimrud, the ancient capital of Assyria, and in the Tigris Valley.

Among the many film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974), directed by Sidney Lument and with Albert Finney as Poirot, and Death on the Nile (1978), with Peter Ustinov as Poirot. (see list below) Both films were nostalgic costume dramas. Sidney Lumet wrote in Making Movies (1995) that clothes contribute an enormus amount to the style of the picture. "When Betty Bacall makes her first appearance in Murder on the Orient Express, she's wearing a full-length peach-colored bias-cut velvet dress with a matching hat and egret feather. Jacqueline Bisset, for her first appearance, wears a full-length blue silk dress, a matching jacket with a white ermine collar, and a tiny pillbox hat with a feather... The object was to thrust the audience into a world it never knew - to create a feeling of how glamorous things used to be." Even the small parts in Murder on the Orient Express was filled by famous stars. Richard Widmark was the victim, Lauren Bacall the American matron, Vanessa Redgrave the lady with the husband, Ingrid Berman the nurse, and John Gielgud the Jeeves character. Also Sean Connery and Anthony Perkins appeared.

According to Billy Wilder, Christie herself considered his Witness for the Prosecution the best film adaptation of her work. Wilder rewrote with Harry Kurnitz Christie's dialogue but did not change the clever plot with a surprise ending. In the film Charles Laughton was Sir Wilfrid, a barrister, who defends Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), an inventor, accused of murdering a middle-aged widowed woman. Marlene Dietrich was his German wife Christie, an actress, eager to testify against her husband. Wilfrid has just recovered from a severe heart attack. The role of his dominating nurse, Miss Plimsoll, was played by Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchester. In one scene she threatens to resign, if Wilfried doesn't go to sleep. "Splendid," he replies. "Give her a month's pay and kick her down the stairs." Dietrich's performance had everything - she sang, kissed passionately Tyrone Power, said "I never use smelling salts because they puff up the eyes," and had a double role as a hard Cockney woman and a coldly articulating German woman. She was very disappointed when she did not even earn an Oscar nomination.

Christie's characters are usually well-to-do people. Often the comfortable lifestyle of his characters is undermined by financial problems, which lead to murder. Although her villains use very complicated plans, they are not impossible, but are firmly grounded on the everyday reality: "Miss Lyall's hobby in life, as has been said, was the study of human beings. Unlike most English people, she was capable of speaking to strangers on sight instead of allowing four days to a week to elapse before making the first cautious advance as is the customary British habit." (from 'Trinagle at Rhodes' in Murder in the Mews, 1937) In many stories the reader is fooled to suspect an innocent character, but most innovative Christie was when she revealed the guilty party: it has been the narrator, a group of people, a serial killer who tries to hide an obvious motive for his killing one of the victims, and so forth. Christie's world view was conservative and rational, but there is always a place for accidents: "'...Does it not strike you that the easiest way of removing someone you want to remove from your path is to take advantage of accident? Accidents are happening all the time. And sometimes - Hastings - they can be helped to happen!'" (from Dumb Witness, 1937). Christie gives always a logical explanation for crimes, but society is not blamed. Murder is not a sign of degeneration of middle-class values. After the crime is solved, life continues happily. Although Christie's writing career spanned over six decades, she was conscious of social change without fixating on the period between the two World Wars. "When I reread those first books," she said in 1966, "I'm amazed at the number of servants drifting around. And nobody is really doing any work, they're always having tea on the lawn." However, she did not like editing her own text and was even reluctant to change the spelling unless a word has actually been misspelt.

By 1955 Christie had become a limited company, Agatha Christie Ltd, which was acquired in the late 1960s by Booker Books. It had already acquired Ian Fleming. In 1967 Christie became president of the British Detection Club, and in 1971 she was made a Dame of the British Empire. Christie died on January 12, 1976 in Wallingford, Oxforshire. Mallowan died two years later, but he had married after Christie's death an old family friend. With over one hundred novels and over one hundred translations into foreign languages, Christie was by the time of her death the best-selling English novelist of all time. As Margery Allingham said: Christie has "entertained more people for more hours at time that any other writer of her generation." (New York Times Book Review, 1950)

The Brazilian author PAULO COELHO was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist.

Coelho wrote song lyrics for many famous performers in Brazilian music, such as Elis Regina and Rita Lee. Yet his most well known work has been done with Raul Seixas. Together they wrote such successes as Eu nasci há dez mil anos atrás (I was born ten thousand years ago), Gita and Al Capone, amongst other 60 songs.

His fascination with the spiritual quest dates back to his hippie days, when he travelled the world learning about secret societies, oriental religions, etc.

In 1982 Coelho published his first book, Hell Archives, which failed to make any kind of impact. In 1985 he contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism, although he later tried to take it off the shelves, since he considered it “of bad quality�. In 1986, PAULO COELHO did the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, an experience later to be documented in his book The Pilgrimage.

In the following year, COELHO published The Alchemist. Slow initial sales convinced his first publisher to drop the novel, but it went on to become one of the best selling Brazilian books of all time.

Other titles include Brida (1990), The Valkyries (1992), By the river Piedra I sat Down and Wept (1994), the collection of his best columns published in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo entitle Maktub (1994), the compilation of texts Phrases (1995), The Fifth Mountain (1996), Manual of a Warrior of Light (1997), Veronika decides to die (1998), The Devil and Miss Prym (2000), the compilation of traditional tales in Stories for parents, children and grandchildren (2001), Eleven Minutes (2003), The Zahir (2005)

He also adapted The Gift (Henry Drummond) and Love letters of a prophet (Kalil Gibran).

To date, Coelho has sold a total of 85 million copies and, according to the magazine Publishing Trends; he was the most sold author in the world in 2003 with his book Eleven Minutes – even though at the time it hadn’t been released in the United States, Japan or 10 other countries!

Also according to Publishing Trends, The Alchemist was to be found in the 6th place of world sales in 2003. Eleven Minutes topped all lists in the world, except for England, where it was in second place. The Zahir, published in 2005, was in third place of bestsellers according to Publishing Trends, after Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.

The Alchemist was one of the most important literary phenomena of the 20th century. It reaches the first place in bestselling lists in 18 countries, and so far has sold 30 million copies.

The book has been praised by different personalities ranging from the Nobel Prize Kenzaburo Oe to the singer Madonna, who considers it one of her favourite books. It has equally inspired many projects – such as a musical in Japan, theatre plays in France, Belgium, USA, Turkey, Italy, Switzerland. It is also the theme of two symphonies (Italy and USA) and had its text illustrated by the famous French artist Moebius (author of the sceneries for he Fifth Element and Alien).

His work has been translated in 65 languages and edited in more than 150 countries.

PAULO COELHO is:

• Member of the Board of the Shimon Peres Institute for Peace
• UNESCO special counsellor for “Intercultural Dialogues and Spiritual Convergencesâ€Â?
• Board Member of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
• Member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters

Major prizes and decorations

• Distinction of Honour from the City of Odense (Hans Christian Andersen Award) (Denmark 2007)
• Las Pergolas Prize 2006 by the Association of Mexican Booksellers (ALMAC) (Mexico 2006)
• "I Premio ÃÂ?lava en el Corazón" (Spain 2006)
• "Cruz do Mérito do Empreendedor Juscelino Kubitschek" (Brazil 2006)
• “Wilbur Awardâ€Â?, presented by the Religion Communicators Council (USA 2006)
• Kiklop Literary Award for The Zahir in the category "Hit of the Year" (Croatia 2006)
• DirectGroup International Author Award (Germany 2005)
• "Goldene Feder Award" (Germany 2005)
• "The Budapest Prize" (Hungary 2005)
• "Order of Honour of Ukraine" (Ukraine 2004)
• "Order of St. Sophia" for contribution to revival of science and culture (Ukraine 2004)
• "Nielsen Gold Book Award" for The Alchemist (UK 2004)
• "Ex Libris Award" for Eleven Minutes (Serbia 2004)
• Golden Bestseller Prize from the largest circulation daily "VeÄÂ?ernje Novosti" (Serbia 2004)
• "Best Fiction Corine International Award 2002" for The Alchemist (Germany 2002)
• "Club of Budapest Planetary Arts Award 2002" as a recognition of his literary work (Germany 2002)
• "Bambi 2001 Award" (Germany 2001)
• "XXIII Premio Internazionale Fregene" (Italy 2001)
• "Crystal Mirror Award" (Poland 2000)
• "Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur" (France 1999)
• "Crystal Award" World Economic Forum (1999)
• "Golden Medal of Galicia" (Spain 1999)
• Finalist for the "International IMPAC Literary Award" (Ireland 1997 and 2000)
• "Comendador de Ordem do Rio Branco" (Brazil 1998)
• "Golden Book" (Yugoslavia 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2004)
• "Super Grinzane Cavour Book Award" (Italy 1996)
• "Flaiano International Award" (Italy 1996)
• "Knight of Arts and Letters" (France 1996)
• "Grand Prix Litteraire Elle" (France 1995)

Dan Brown is the author of numerous bestselling novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Da Vinci Code -- one of the best selling novels of all time. In early 2004, all four of Dan Brown's novels held spots on the New York Times bestseller list during the same week.

Recently named one of the World's 100 Most Influential People by TIME Magazine, Dan Brown has made appearances on CNN, The Today Show, National Public Radio, Voice of America, as well as in the pages of Newsweek, Forbes, People, GQ, The New Yorker, and others. His novels have been translated and published in more than 40 languages around the world.

Dan is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he spent time as an English teacher before turning his efforts fully to writing. In 1996, his interest in code-breaking and covert government agencies led him to write his first novel, Digital Fortress, which quickly became a #1 national bestselling eBook. Set within the clandestine National Security Agency, the novel explores the fine line between civilian privacy and national security. Brown’s follow-up techno-thriller, Deception Point, centered on similar issues of morality in politics, national security, and classified technology.

The son of a Presidential Award winning math professor and of a professional sacred musician, Dan grew up surrounded by the paradoxical philosophies of science and religion. These complementary perspectives served as inspiration for his acclaimed novel Angels & Demons�a science vs. religion thriller set within a Swiss physics lab and Vatican City. Recently, he has begun work on a series of symbology thrillers featuring his popular protagonist Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of iconography and religious art. The upcoming series will include books set in Paris, London, and Washington D.C.

Dan’s wife Blythe�an art history buff and painter�collaborates on his research and accompanies him on his frequent research trips, their latest to Paris, where they spent time in the Louvre for his thriller, The Da Vinci Code.

The Da Vinci Code has sold some 70 million copies worldwide and is now being adapted for film by Columbia Pictures.

In 1996, Brown quit teaching to become a full-time writer. Digital Fortress was published in 1998. Blythe did much of the book's promotion, writing press releases, booking Brown on talk shows, and setting up press interviews. A few months later, Brown and his wife released The Bald Book, another humor book. It was officially credited to his wife, though a representative of the publisher said that it was primarily written by Brown.

Brown's first three novels had little success, with fewer than 10,000 copies in each of their first printings; but the fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, became a runaway bestseller, going to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list during its first week of release in 2003. It is now credited with being one of the most popular books of all time, with 60.5 million copies sold worldwide as of 2006. Its success has helped push sales of Brown's earlier books. In 2004, all four of his novels were on the New York Times list in the same week, and in 2005, he made Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Forbes magazine placed Brown at #12 on their 2005 "Celebrity 100" list, and estimated his annual income at US$76.5 million. The Times estimated his income from 'Da Vinci Code' sales as $250 million.

In October 2004, Brown and his siblings donated US$2.2 million to Phillips Exeter Academy in honor of their father, to set up the "Richard G. Brown Technology Endowment," to help "provide computers and high-tech equipment for students in need."

Brown is interested in cryptography, keys, and codes, which are a recurring theme in his stories. Currently his novels have been translated into more than 40 languages.

In 2006, Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code was released as a film by Columbia Pictures, with director Ron Howard; the film starred Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu and Sir Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing. It was considered one of the most anticipated films of the year, and was used to launch the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, though it received overall poor reviews. It was later listed as one of the worst films of 2006, but also the second highest grossing film of the year, pulling in $750 million USD. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman has been commissioned to adapt Angels & Demons, although whether Ron Howard will direct the project is as yet unknown.

Brown was listed as one of the executive producers of the film The Da Vinci Code, and also created additional codes for the film. One of his songs, "Piano", which Brown wrote and performed, was listed as part of the film's soundtrack.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the small seaport of Taganrog, southern Russia, as the son of a grocer and grandson of a serf, who had bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught himself to read and write. Chekhov's mother was Yevgenia Morozov, the daughter of a cloth merchant. Chekhov's childhood was shadowed by his father's tyranny, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, which was open from five in the morning till midnight. "When I think back on my childhood," he later said, "it all seems quite gloomy to me."

He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog (1867-68) and Taganrog grammar school (1868-79). The family was forced to move to Moskow following his father's bankruptcy. At the age of 16, Chekhov became independent and remained for some time alone in his native town, supporting himself through private tutoring.

In 1879 Chekhov entered the Moskow University Medical School. While in the school, he started to publish hundreds of comic short stories to support himself and his mother, sisters and brothers. His publisher at this period was Nicholas Leikin, owner of the St. Petersburg journal Oskolki (splinters). His subjects were silly social situations, marital problems, farcical encounters between husbands, wives, mistresses, and lovers, whims of young women, of whom Chekhov had not much knowledge - the author was was shy with women even after his marriage. His works appeared in St. Petersburg daily papers, Peterburskaia gazeta from 1885, and Novoe vremia from 1886.

Chekhov's first novel, Nenunzhaya pobeda (1882), set in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Hungarian writer Mór Jókai. As a politician Jókai was also mocked for his ideological optimism. By 1886 Chekhov had gained a wide fame as a writer. His second full-length novel, The Shooting Party, was translated into English in 1926. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926).

Chekhov graduated in 1884, and practiced medicine until 1892. In 1886 Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him to become a regular contributor for the St. Petersburg daily Novoe vremya. His friendship with Suvorin ended in 1898 because of his objections to the anti-Dreyfus campaingn conducted by paper. But during these years Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgemental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion."

Chekhov's fist book of stories (1886) was a success, and gradually he became a full-time writer. The author's refusal to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intellitentsia and he was criticized for dealing with serious social and moral questions, but avoiding giving answers. However, he was defended by such leading writers as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.

The failure of his play The Wood Demon (1889) and problems with his novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890 he travelled across Siberia to remote prison island, Sakhalin. There he conducted a detailed census of some 10,000 convicts and settlers condemned to live their lives on that harsh island. Chekhov hoped to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. It is probable that hard conditions on the island also worsened his own physical condition. From this journey was born his famous travel book The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin (1893-94). Chekhov returned to Russia via Singapore, India, Ceylon, and the Suez Canal. From 1892 to 1899 Chekhov worked in Melikhovo, and in Yalta from 1899.

Chekhov was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1888. Next year he was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. In 1900 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, but resigned his post two years later as a protest against the cancellation by the authorities of Gorky's election to the Academy. Later, in 1900, Gorky wrote to him: "After any of your stories, however insignificant, everything appears crude, as if written not by a pen, but by a cudgel."

As a short story writer Chekhov was phenomenally fast - he could compose a little sketch or a joke while just visiting at a newspaper office. During his career he produced several hundred tales. 'Palata No. 6' (1892, Ward Number Six) is Chekhov's classical story of the abuse of psychiatry. Gromov is convinced that anyone can be imprisoned. He develops a persecution mania and is incarcerated in a horrific asylum, where he meets Doctor Ragin. Their relationship attracts attention and the doctor is tricked into becoming a patient in his own ward. He dies after being beaten by a charge hand. - The symmetrical story has much similarities with such works as Samuel Fuller's film The Shock Corridor (1963), and Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over Cockoo's Nest (1975).

Today Chekhov's fame today rests primarily on his plays. He used ordinary conversations, pauses, noncommunication, nonhappening, incomplete thoughts, to reveal the truth behind trivial words and daily life. His characters belong often to the provincial middle class, petty aristocracy, or landowners of prerevolutionary Russia. They contemplate their unsatisfactory lives unable to make decisions and help themselves when a crisis breaks out.

Chekhov's first full-length plays were failures. When The Seagull was revised in 1898 by Stanislavsky at the Moskow Art Theatre, he gained also fame as a playwright. Among his masterpieces from this period is Uncle Vanya (1900), a melancholic story of Sonia and his brother-in-law Ivan (Uncle Vanya), who see their dreams and hopes passing in drudgery for others. The Three Sisters (1901) was set in a provincial garrison town. The talented Prozorov sisters, whose hopes have much in common with the Brontë sisters, recognize the uselessness of their lives and cling to one another for consolation. "If only we knew! If only we knew!" cries Olga at the end of the play.

The Cherry Orchaid (1904) reflected the larger developments in the Russian society. Mme Ranevskaias returns to her estate and finds out that the family house, together with the adjoining orchard, is to be auctioned. Her brother Gaev is too impractical to help in the crisis. The businessman Lopakhin purchases the estate and the orchard is demolished. "Everything on earth must come to an end..."

In these three famous plays Chekhov blended humor and tragedy. He left much room for imagination - his plays as well as his stories are in opposition to the concept of an artist as a mouthpiece of political change or social message. However, in his late years Chekhov supported morally the young experimental director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who hoped to establish a revolutionary theater. Usually in Chekhov's dramas surprise and tension are not key elements, the dramatic movement is subdued, his characters do not fight, they endure their fate with patience. But in the process they perhaps discover something about themselves and their monotonous life.

Chekhov bought in 1892 a country estate in the village of Melikhove, where his best stories were written, including 'Neighbours' (1892), 'Ward Number Six', 'The Black Monk' (1894), 'The Murder' (1895), and 'Ariadne' (1895). He also served as a volunteer census taker, participated in famine relief, and worked as a medical inspector during cholore epidemics. In 1897 he fell ill with tuberculosis and lived since either abroad or in the Crimea.

Chekhov married in 1901 the Moscow Art Theater actress Olga Knipper (1870-1959), who had several years central roles in his plays on stage. In Yalta Chekhov wrote his famous stories 'The Man in a Shell,' 'Gooseberries,' 'About Love,' 'Lady with the Dog,' and 'In the Ravine.' His last great story, 'The Betrothed,' was an optimistic tale of a young woman who escapes from provincial dullness into personal freedom. Tolstoy, who admired Chekhov's fiction, did not think much of his dramatic skills. When he met Chekhov in Yalta, he said: "Don't write any more plays, old thing." Chekhov himself thought that Tolstoy was already a very sick man at that time, but he lived longer than Chekhov.

Chekhov died on July 14/15, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany. He was buried in the cemetery of the Novodeviche Monastery in Moscow. Though a celebrated figure by the Russian literary public at the time of his death, Chekhov remained rather unknown internationally until the years after World War I, when his works were translated into English.

Chekhov's brother Aleksandr, who married the author's mistress Natalia Golden, had problems with alcohol. His son Mihail moved in the 1920s first to Germany and then in the United States, where he worked as a teacher of acting and acted among others in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). It has been said that during WW II the German army saved Chekhov's house in Yalta because Mihail's wife Olga, whose aunt was married to Chekhov, had been photographed with Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring. She also was a Soviet agent and knew Stalin.

Jo moved house twice when she was growing up. The first move was from Yate (just outside Bristol in the south west of England) to Winterbourne. Jo, her sister and friends used to play together in her street in Winterbourne. Two of her friends were a brother and sister whose surname just happened to be Potter! The second move was when Jo was nine and she moved to Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean. Jo loved living in the countryside and spent most of her time wandering across fields and along the river Wye with her sister. For Jo, the worst thing about her new home was her new school.

Tutshill Primary School was a very small and very old-fashioned place. The roll-top desks in the classrooms still had the old ink wells. Jo's teacher, Mrs Morgan, terrified her. On the first day of school, she gave Jo an arithmetic test, which she failed, scoring zero out of ten. It wasn't that Jo was stupid - she had never done fractions before. So Jo was seated in the row of desks far to the right of Mrs Morgan. Jo soon realised that Mrs Morgan seated her pupils according to how clever she thought they were: the brightest sat to her left, and those she thought were dim were seated to her right. Jo was in the 'stupid' row, 'as far right as you could possibly get without sitting in the playground'.

From Tutshill Primary, Jo went to Wyedean Comprehensive. She was quiet, freckly, short-sighted and not very good at sports. She even broke her arm playing netball. Her favourite subject by far was English, but she also liked languages.

Jo always loved writing more than anything. 'The first story that I ever wrote down, when I was five or six, was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee. And ever since Rabbit and Miss Bee, I have wanted to be a writer, though I rarely told anyone so. I was afraid they'd tell me I didn't have a hope.'

At school, Jo would entertain her friends at lunchtime with stories. 'I used to tell my equally quiet and studious friends long serial stories at lunchtimes.' In these stories, Jo and her friends would be heroic and daring.

As she got older, Jo kept writing but she never showed what she had written to anyone, except for some of her funny stories that featured her friends as heroines.

After school, Jo attended the University of Exeter in Devon where she studied French. Her parents hoped that by studying languages, she would enjoy a great career as a bilingual secretary. But as Jo recalls, 'I am one of the most disorganised people in the world and, as I later proved, the worst secretary ever.' She claims that she never paid much attention in meetings because she was too busy scribbling down ideas. 'This is a problem when you are supposed to be taking the minutes of the meeting,' she says.

When she was 25, Jo started writing a third novel ('I abandoned the first two when I realised how bad they were'). A year later, she went to Portugal to teach English, which she really enjoyed. Working afternoons and evenings, she had mornings free to write. The new novel was about a boy who was a wizard.

When she returned to the UK, Jo had a suitcase full of stories about Harry Potter. She moved to Edinburgh with her young daughter and worked as a French teacher. She also set herself a target: she would finish the 'Harry' novel and get it published. In 1996, one year after finishing the book, Bloomsbury bought Jo's first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

'The moment I found out that Harry would be published was one of the best of my life,’ says Jo. A few months after 'Harry' was accepted for publication in Britain, an American publisher bought the rights for enough money to enable Jo to give up teaching and write full time - her life's ambition!

Born in 1908 as the son of Valentine Fleming, and the grandson of the wealthy Scottish banker Robert Fleming, Ian Lancaster Fleming grew up the member of a rare class of Englishmen for whom all options are open. The privilege of class and respect came not merely from his grandfather's money, as wealth alone in England does not guarantee open doors. The Fleming family earned their social stripes with service and blood. Ian's father was a service-oriented land-owner in Oxfordshire and a member of Parliament. When Valentine Fleming died in the Great War, Ian was 8 days shy of his 9th birthday. Winston Churchill wrote the obituary for The Times.

Fleming's mother, Evelyn St. Croix Rose Fleming, inherited Valentine's large estate in trust, making her a very wealthy woman. The trust, though, cut her out should she ever re-marry. This provision virtually guaranteed that she would remain forever Valentine's widow, regardless of other loves or circumstances. These financial chains of Valentine Fleming's will set the stage for the high-stakes financial pressures which would always dog Ian Fleming's life.

Valentine's ghost lingered over Ian in many other ways. His father would always be the daring young hero, larger than life, articulate, straight as an arrow. In childhood prayers the Fleming children were instructed to pray to be as good as their father. For Ian, that charge proved too tall an order.

Fleming not only had to live with the ghost of his father, but also with the shadow of his brother Peter, who after his father's passing filled the role of patriarch of the family. Peter excelled at Eton and later Oxford.

The knowledge of Ian's late father's looming wealth, and Ian's lack of access to it was bound to make the young Fleming feel disinherited. The elusive Fleming fortune and high achievements of Valentine and Peter seem to have put a chip on Ian's shoulder. As Ian failed to fill their shoes, it appears he became more determined to build his own empire, create his own identity within the family, and be lauded for his own successes.

Ian won the athletic prize 2 years' running at Eton, but left before graduation over an incident involving a girl. It was an ignoble end to his Eton years, but at Eton he was always just Peter's younger brother and Valentine's son.

Fleming's career at the military academy Sandhurst proved just as undistinguished, and he left without taking an officer's commission. He complained in later years that he felt the continued mechanization of the army made the idea of a conventional military career unappealing. A mechanized army, though, is an army without heroes, or personality. And Fleming's streak of independence and apparent need to make his own identity did not fit well with conventional military conduct. Officially, though, Fleming left after being caught out after curfew.

In due course, Fleming went to Europe to continue schooling. Fleming found a home in the small Austrian town of Kitzbuhel where his education changed drastically. In an environment totally unlike the strict and conventional campuses of Eton and Sandhurst, Fleming, under the tutelage of Forbes and Phyllis Dennis, finally found a place to create his own identity. At Kitzbuhel no other students knew Valentine Fleming, war hero, and many students did not know Peter Fleming, academic star (although Peter and Ian did visit the school together the previous summer). The students only knew Ian, rakish, handsome, cultured Etonian with a rapier wit and a certain cool lack of shyness with women.

Forbes and Phyllis Dennis did know Peter and Ian very well, and immediately realized that Ian must be allowed to excel on his own and be in an environment where he did not compete for accolades with his brother Peter. Through their careful work, Ian finally had the chance to become his own person, and not just the black sheep brother of Peter and son of Valentine.

While Fleming found his own identity at Kitzbuhel, he did not seem to find out what he wanted to do with his life. He wrote some short stories and some poems, but made no pretensions, it seems, about being an author. Eventually, Fleming set his sights on the foreign service exam, but to his grave disappointment did not make the grade. Nonetheless, Fleming had set a course for himself and worked hard to achieve his own goals. After the failure to join the Foreign Service, Fleming turned to his brother's profession. Following in his Peter's footsteps, Fleming became a journalist, joining Reuters.

Fleming's greatest success in his brief Reuters career was the reporting he did on a spy trial in Russia. While Fleming did not scoop all of his competition, he did impress his fellow journalists. Ultimately, though, Ian was the "other Fleming" journalist, as his brother Peter hopped the globe writing colorful news from many distant and exotic locals. Beyond the family implications, Fleming also discovered just how little money journalists made. When Robert Fleming died in 1933 leaving no money to any of his grandchildren, Ian once again saw the financial Rubicon which he felt limited his life and future options. The vast family fortune was unavailable to Ian until his mother died or re-married, and both options seemed unlikely. Fleming made his decision, leaving journalism. In one of his few compromises, Fleming, capitalizing on the family name, joined a London banking firm which he hoped would make him rich.

Banking never earned Fleming the fortune he sought, but it gave him independence. He took up residence in Belgravia at 22B Ebury Street where he entertained friends in a portion of the old converted temple where he lived. Ian had enough money to host dinner parties for his lose-knit group "Le Cercle gastronomique et des jeux de hasard". Fleming's love of the off-beat and simple elegance impressed his friends. High-stakes bridge games, elaborate meals and indifferent romances filled Fleming's off-work hours. Peter Fleming churned out books of true adventure stories while Ian casually purchased an important collection of scientific and political first editions. Peter could be the writer while Ian ate, drank, and loved his way through life.

By 1939, it appears Fleming had become bored with the plodding day-to-day existence of a banker. The ups and downs of the stock market apparently did not provide enough intrigue for him. During his Reuters days, Fleming had made friends in the Foreign Office, and maintained them even as a banker. In 1939, Fleming oddly took on an assignment for the Times to return to the Soviet Union to report on a trade mission. It appears that Fleming, in fact, was all the time spying for the Foreign Office.

In May of 1939, Fleming started a more formal attachment to the intelligence service, working with Naval Intelligence. Soon, he was full-time assistant to the director, taking the rank of Lieutenant, and later Commander. Fleming became the right-hand man to one of Britain's top spymasters, Admiral John Godfrey.

The war was good to Fleming, tapping his imagination, forcing him to work within discipline. Fleming schemed, plotted, and carried out dangerous missions. From the famous Room 39 in the Admiralty building in London's Whitehall, Fleming tossed out a myriad of off-beat ideas on how to confuse, survey, and enrage the Germans.

In a 1940 trip into a crumbling France, Fleming supervised the escape from Dieppe, juggling the security needs of his country against the crush of refugees seeking escape from the Nazi machine. With Fleming flair, he spent one of his last evening eating and drinking some of the best food in the country, and one of his last days coordinating the evacuation of King Zog of Albania.

The "Fleming flair" proved to be his greatest strength in Naval Intelligence. He dined at Scott's, White's, the Dorchester, plotted intelligence operations, many of which were absurd, and many of which proved ingenious. Yet, Fleming understood the business side of the war. He understood his practical job, and the tight constraints of man-power, money and supplies. He did not take his assignments lightly, always gravely aware of the real human risks involved.

The "Fleming flair" also proved valuable in one other aspect: writing. As assistant to Admiral Godfrey, Fleming wrote countless memos and reports. His style and elegant arguments, plus his seemingly limitless knowledge of his subjects made the usual dry missives a pleasure to read. Eventually, Fleming wrote memos to William "Wild Bill" Donovan on how to set up the OSS, forerunner to the CIA. For that bit of work, Fleming received a revolver engraved with the thanks: "For Special Services."

Fleming traveled as Admiral Godfrey's right hand, meeting J. Edgar Hoover in Washington and William Stephenson in New York. Fleming worked closely with the latter.

Deeper in the war, Fleming took charge of 30 Assault Unit, a group of specially trained commandos who were sent on specific intelligence missions. These missions often meant work behind the lines making sure the Germans did not have a chance to destroy their valuable files. The 30 AU proved to be a great success. Fleming packed them off on missions while he remained mostly desk-bound in London. Nonetheless, 30 AU was his group, and their successes were heaped on his shoulders.

During the last year of the war, Fleming traveled to Jamaica for a Naval conference. The trip, though brief, revealed the lush island to Fleming. Here there was no war, no rationing, no food shortages. Fruit lay rotting on the trees and fine rum flowed from the plantations. Fleming immediately began planning for his escape to paradise.

Every person plans to run off to some tropical isle, but few do. Real life, family, work, and monetary limitations get in the way. Ian Fleming let none of these considerations stop him. When his war was over, he would, with certainty, return to Jamaica, and not just as a tourist.

Fleming set to work. He purchased property, designed a house, and set about doing paradise right. The house, Goldeneye, was like Fleming's writing would prove to be: simple, direct, filled with panache, but never elegant, or opulent. There was no hot-water plumbing, no glass in the jalousied windows, no provision for air conditioning. Yet, the house quickly became one of the most envied on the north coast of Jamaica.

After the war, Fleming set down his schedule. The first week of January saw him leave England and travel to Jamaica. The first week of March saw his return. He accepted his job at Kemsley newspapers without compromise -- this portion of the year would be set aside for Jamaica or he would look elsewhere for employment.

For 6 years Fleming traveled each winter to Jamaica, lounging in paradise, romancing women, chasing the sunset, but it was not until he faced the pressure of a married woman who was pregnant with his child did Fleming start the writer's journey which would change his life and popular culture forever.

The married woman, Lady Anne Rothermere, had for years been having an affair with Ian, and now pregnant, the time had come for Fleming, at almost 44 years of age to act like a grown-up and marry. As Fleming waited in Jamaica for Anne's divorce to become final, he wrote the first draft of a novel, Casino Royale.

By this time, 1952, Ian Fleming's circle of friends included some of the top literary names in England. Fleming knew Noel Coward, Eric Ambler, Peter Quennell, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Cyril Connolly, among others. Fleming had the charm and self-confidence to pick his friends, compartmentalize them, and the self-reliance to never depend on them.

Fleming's career as a writer deserves more examination than can be offered here, but suffice it to say, over the next 12 years, Ian Fleming transformed his elite existence, his arrogance, his style, and his acid wit into some of the greatest thrillers ever written. Fleming incurred the respect of authors as diverse as Raymond Chandler, Kingsley Amis, and Edith Sitwell. His fans included John, Jackie, and Bobby Kennedy, and his social circle included Prime Minister Anthony Eden, Evelyn Waugh, and Somerset Maugham.

Fleming filled out the 12 years of Bond with great adventure journalism. Even in stories which had little action or pay off, such as his short non-fiction book, The Diamond Smugglers , the "Fleming-flair" ensured exciting reading. He wrote the Atticus column for the Sunday Times, proving a wonderful conduit for inside intelligence information, and clever rebukes.

Regardless of book sales or family obligations, Fleming managed to live the life he wanted. As the years passed, his passion for golfing increased so he took more time with it. Fleming's long-term fascination with America grew, so he traveled there more often.

Fleming's full life caught up with him through his heart. It may be that years of drinking and smoking took their toll, or that the butter-rich cooking Fleming loved was the culprit. Or maybe it was just genetics. Whatever the cause, Fleming's health declined in the late 1950s. This plus anxieties in the marriage increased Fleming's depression. With the success of Bond, the world came knocking at Fleming's door, and he had a harder time shutting those out that he did not want in his life.

Nonetheless, Fleming fought the loosing battle of his weakening heart by throwing more fuel on the fire. He continued to drink and smoke, making some excuses but not many. He wrote books he wanted to read, and traveled the world with style and authority.

In 1964, Fleming suffered a severe debilitating chest cold, which combined with pleurisy, forcing a slow recovery. That summer his mother died, leaving behind her small fortune from Valentine Fleming's trust. By this time, Fleming had already earned his own fortune, created his own identity, and ruled his own literary empire. His doctors advised him he was too ill to attend his mother's service, but he went anyway.

Fleming tried to force his recovery, dictating letters in protest of his condition, as if by sheer will, Fleming could regain his health. In August went to St. Georges to meet with the golf committee. His heart failed him, and the night of August 11, Ian Fleming began to bleed to death from within. At 1 a.m. on August 12, 1964, Ian Fleming died at the age of 56. He is buried in Sevenhampton, near Swindon not too far from the Welsh border. His wife Anne died in 1981. Fleming's only child, Casper, died from a suicidal drug overdose in 1975. Both are buried beside Ian beneath a simple obelisk monument in the shadow of the local stone church.

British writer, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who is the best-known detective in literature and the embodiment of sharp reasoning. Doyle himself was not a good example of rational personality: he believed in fairies and was interested in occultism. Sherlock Holmes stories have been translated into more than fifty languages, and made into plays, films, radio and television series, a musical comedy, a ballet, cartoons, comic books, and advertisement. By 1920 Doyle was one of the most highly paid writers in the world.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born at Picardy Place, Edinburgh, as the son of Charles Altamont Doyle, a civil servant in the Edinburgh Office of Works, and Mary (Foley) Doyle. Both of Doyle's parents were Roman Catholics. To increase his income Charles Altamont painted, made book illustrations, and also worked as a sketch artist on criminal trials. Not long after arriving Edinburgh he started to drink, he suffered from epilepsy and was eventually institutionalized. Richard Doyle (1824-83), the uncle of A.C. Doyle and the son of the caricaturist John Doyle, was also an illustrator. He worked for Punch and illustrated chiefly fairy stories, including Ruskin's The King of the Golden River, W. Allingham's In Fairyland and some of Dickens's Christmas Books.

Doyle's mother, Mary, whom he called "the Ma'am," was interested in literature, and she encouraged his son to explore the world of books. Doyle's second wife, Jean, said: "My husband's mother was a very remarkable and highly cultured woman. She had a dominant personality, wrapped up on the most charming womanly exterior." At the age of fourteen Doyle had learned French so that he could read Jules Verne in the author's original language. Charles Altamot died in an asylum in 1893; in the same year Doyle decided to finish permanently the adventures of his master detective. Because of financial problems, Doyle's mother kept a boarding house. Dr. Tsukasa Kobayashi has alluded in an article, that she had a long affair with Bryan Charles Waller, a lodger and a student of pathology, who had a deep impact to Conan Doyle. He also supported young Arthur financially. Mary's last child was named Bryan Julia Doyle - perhaps referring to Waller's mother, who also was Julia.

Doyle was educated in Jesuit schools. During this period Doyle lost his belief in the Roman Catholic faith, but the training of the Jesuits influenced deeply his thought. Later he used his friends and teachers from Stonyhurst College as models for his characters in the Holmes stories, among them two boys named Moriarty. Doyle studied at Edinburgh University and in 1884 he married Louise Hawkins.

Doyle qualified as doctor in 1885. After graduation Doyle practiced medicine as an eye specialist at Southsea near Porsmouth in Hampshire until 1891 when he became a full time writer. His first story, an illustrated tale of a man and a tiger, Doyle had produced at the age of six. Doyle's first novel about Holmes, A STUDY IN SCARLET, was published in 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual. The story was written in three weeks in 1886. It introduced the detective and his Sancho Panza and Boswell, Dr. Watson, the narrator. Their major opponent, the evil genius Dr. Moriarty, became a kind of doppelgänger of the detective. Also the intrigues of the beautiful opera singer Irene Adler caused much trouble to Holmes.

The second Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of the Four', was written for the Lippincott's Magazine. Doyle collected a colorful group of people together, among them Jonathan Small who has a wooden leg and a dwarf from Tonga islands. The Strand Magazine started to publish 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' from July 1891. Holmes's address at Mrs. Hudson's house, 221B Baker Street, London, is perhaps the most famous London street in literature.

Already at the end of 1891, Doyle planned to abandon the series. "I have had such an overdose of [Holmes] that I feel towards him as I do toward pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day", he confessed. In 1893 Doyle devised his death in the 'Final Problem,' published in the Strand in the December issue. Holmes meets Moriarty at the fall of the Reichenbach in Switzerland and disappears. Watson finds a letter from Homes, stating "I have already explained to you, however, that my career had in any case reached its crisis, and that no possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to me than this."

Doyle's readers expressed their disappointment by wearing mourning bands and Strand lost 20,000 subscriptions. In THE HOUND OF BASKERVILLES (1902) Doyle narrated an early case of the dead detective. The ingenious murder weapon in the story is an animal. Because of public demand Doyle resurrected his popular character in 'The Empty House' (1903). "I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and last time in my life." (from 'The Empty House')

In these following stories Holmes stopped using cocaine. Although Doyle's later works have been criticized, several of them, including 'The Three Garridebs,' 'The Adventure of the Illustrious Client,' and 'The Veiled Lodger,' are highly enjoyable. Sherlock Holmes short stories were collected in five books. The first appeared in 1892 under the title THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. It was followed by THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1894), THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1904), HIS LAST BOW (1917), and THE CASE-BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1927).

During the South African war (1899-1902) Doyle served for a few months as senior physician at a field hospital, and wrote THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA, in which he defended England's policy. The same uncritical attitude toward the British empire marked his history of World War I, THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS, 1928 (6 vols.). Doyle was knighted in 1902 and in 1900 and 1906 he also ran unsuccessfully for Parliament. Fourteen months after his long-invalided wife Louisa died, Conan Doyle married in 1907 his second wife, Jean Leckie. When his son Kingsley died from wounds incurred in World War I, the author dedicated himself in spiritualistic studies. An example of these is THE COMING OF FAIRIES (1922). But he had already showed interest in occult fantasy before publishing Holmes stories. In his early novel, THE MYSTERY OF CLOOMBER (1888), a retired general finds himself under assault by Indian magic.

Doyle supported the existence of "little people" and spent more than a million dollars on their cause. The so-called "fairy photographs" caused an international sensation when Doyle published a favorable account of them in 1920. The photographs showed fairies dancing in the air. A year after, the Star newspaper reported that the fairies were from a poster. Doyle became president of several important spiritualist organizations. In 1925 he opened the Psychic Bookshop in London. Among his friends was the legendary American magician and escape artist Harry Houdini (1874-1926). He believed that Houdini possessed supernatural powers, which the magician himself denied. Another friend was D.D. Home. According to Doyle, he could levitate. Once Doyle claimed that Home "floated out of the bedroom and into the sitting room window, passing seventy feet above the street." His own psychic experiences Doyle recorded in THE EDGE OF UNKNOWN (1930), which was his last book. Doyle died on July 7, 1930 from heart disease at his home, Windlesham, Sussex.

Conan Doyle's other publications include plays, verse, memoirs, short stories, and several historical novels and supernatural and speculative fiction. His stories of Professor George Edward Challenger in THE LOST WORLD (1912) and other adventures blended science fact with fantastic romance, and were very popular. The model for the professor was William Rutherford, Doyle's teacher from Edinburgh. Doyle's practice, and other experiences, expeditions as ship's surgeon to the Arctic and West Coast of Africa, service in the Boer War, defenses of George Edalji and Oscar Slater, two men wrongly imprisoned, provided much material for his writings.

Sherlock Holmes's literary forefather was Edgar Allan Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin and on the other hand a real life person, Conan Doyle's teacher in the University of Edinburgh, Joseph Bell, master of observation and deduction, a legend at the medical school. Another model for the detective was Eugène Francois Vidoq, a former criminal, who became the first chief of the Sûreté on the principle of 'set a thief to catch a thief.' Holmes's character have inspired many later writers to continue his adventures. Among them are O. Henry, Robert L. Fish and Nicholas Meyer with his novels The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1975) and The West End Horror (1976). Philip José Farmer's The Adventure of the Peerless Peer (1974) pastiched the Sherlock Holmes saga in the context of his World Newton Family series. In Robert Lee Hall's novel Exit Sherlock Holmes (1977) Moriarty is Holmes's alter ego. In Dr. Fu Manchu novel Ten Years Beyond Baker Street (1984) the Evil Doctor fights Sherlock Holmes. Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October (1993) features Holmes in a bit part. Perhaps the best actor who ever played Sherlock Holmes was not Basil Rathbone but Jeremy Brett (1935-1995). Brett devoted himself entirely to the role in a television series produced by Granada TV from 1984 to 1994. The tv scripts were very faithful to original texts.

Nicholas Charles Sparks (b. December 31, 1965) is an internationally bestselling American author. He writes novels with themes that include Christianity, love, tragedy and fate. He is currently author of twelve published novels and lives in New Bern, North Carolina, with his wife Cathy and their five children.

Nicholas Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska to Patrick Michal Sparks, a professor, and Jill Emma Marie (née Thoene) Sparks, a homemaker and an optometrist’s assistant. He has one living sibling, brother Michael Earl "Micah" Sparks (1964 - ) and a deceased sister Danielle "Dana" Sparks (1967-2000).

Because his father was pursuing graduate studies when Nicholas was a young child, he lived in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, Nebraska, all before the age of eight. In 1974 his family eventually settled in Fair Oaks, California and remained there through Nicholas's high school career. He graduated in 1984 as valedictorian from Bella Vista High School and went straight on to college, having received a full track and field scholarship from the University of Notre Dame. As a first year student in 1985, Nicholas's relay team set a still-standing school record for the 4 x 800 meter relay. He majored in Business Finance and graduated with high honors in 1988.

Nicholas met his wife Cathy Cole (from New Hampshire) during spring break in 1988. They married in July 1989 and lived in Sacramento, California. He had been rejected by both publishers and law schools, Nicholas chose to try his hand in various careers over the next three years, i.e. real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling dental products by phone and starting his own manufacturing business. In 1992, Sparks began selling pharmaceuticals and in 1993 he was transferred to New Bern, North Carolina, where he wrote his first published novel The Notebook

Nicholas and his wife currently reside in New Bern with their three sons Miles Andrew, Ryan Cote, and Landon, and their twin daughters Lexie Danielle and Savannah Marin. Nicholas recently donated a track to New Bern High School and contributes to local and national charities. He contributes to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame by funding scholarships, internships and annual fellowships.

In 1985 Nicholas penned his first novel The Passing while home for the summer between freshman and sophomore years at Notre Dame. It was never published. In 1989 he wrote his second, also unpublished, novel The Royal Murders. In 1994, over a period of six months, Nicholas penned what was to be his first published novel, The Notebook. He was discovered by literary agent Theresa Park, who picked The Notebook out of her agency's slush pile, liked it, and offered to represent him. In October of 1995, Park secured a $ 1 million advance for The Notebook from Time Warner Book Group. The novel was published in October 1996 and made the New York Times best seller list on its first week.

After his first publishing success, he wrote a string of international bestsellers (See "List of Published Works"), all of which were translated into over thirty-five languages. Three of his novels have been made into feature-length films: Message in a Bottle (1999), A Walk to Remember (2002), and The Notebook (2004). As of March 2006, each movie has grossed a total lifetime amount of:

• Message In A Bottle, over $118 million
• A Walk To Remember, over $47 million
• The Notebook, over $115 million

Nicholas said during an October 2005 book signing in Greenville, SC, that the next movie to be based on one of his books would be Nights In Rodanthe. Richard Gere has been signed to the lead part.

These successes make the novels one of the most profitable franchises in Hollywood. Nicholas has also written a currently unsold screenplay for The Guardian. The Maine emo-rock band Sparks the Rescue used the name of his book The Rescue and Nicholas's last name to make the band's name.

• The Notebook (October 1996)
• Message in a Bottle (April 1998)
• A Walk to Remember (October 1999)
  
• The Rescue (September 2000)
  
• A Bend in the Road (September 2001)
• Nights in Rodanthe (September 2002)
• The Guardian (April 2003)
• The Wedding (September 2003)
  
• Three Weeks with my Brother (April 2004)
  
• True Believer (April 2005)
• At First Sight (October 2005)
  
• Dear John (October 2006)
• The Choice (September 2007)
  

Wilde was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, poet and critic, and a celebrity in late 19th century London.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. His father was a successful surgeon and his mother a writer and literary hostess. Wilde was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. While at Oxford, Wilde became involved in the aesthetic movement. After he graduated, he moved to London to establish a literary career.

His output was diverse. A first volume of his poetry was published in 1881 but as well as composing verse, he contributed to publications such as the 'Pall Mall Gazette', wrote fairy stories and published a novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (1891). His greatest talent was for writing plays, and he produced a string of extremely popular comedies including 'Lady Windermere's Fan' (1892), 'An Ideal Husband (1895)' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest' (1895). 'Salomé' was performed in Paris in 1894

Drama and tragedy marred Wilde's private life. He married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and they had two sons but in 1891 Wilde began an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed 'Bosie'. In April 1895 Wilde sued Bosie's father, the Marquis of Queensberry for libel, after the Marquis has accused him of being homosexual. Wilde's case was unsuccessful and, because of details of his private life revealed during the trial, he was arrested and tried for gross indecency. He was sentenced to two year hard labour, composing the poem 'De Profundis' while in prison. His wife took their children to Switzerland and adopted the name 'Holland'. Wilde was released with his health irrevocably damaged and his reputation ruined. He spent the rest of his life in Europe, publishing 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' in 1898. He died in Paris on 30 November 1900.

Major Works

Poetry

• Ravenna (1878)
• Poems (1881)
• The Sphinx (1894)
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Plays

• Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)
• The Duchess of Padua (1883)
• Salomé (French version) (1893, first performed in Paris 1896)
• Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
• A Woman of No Importance (1893)
• Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act: Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley (1894)
• An Ideal Husband (1895)
  
• The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
  
• La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy Fragmentary. First published 1908 in Methuen's Collected Works

Prose

• The Canterville Ghost (1887)
• The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888, fairy tales) [3]
• Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891)
• Intentions (1891, critical dialogues and essays)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891, Wilde's only novel)
• A House of Pomegranates (1891, fairy tales)
• The Soul of Man under Socialism (First published in the Pall Mall Gazette, 1891, first book publication 1904)
• De Profundis (1905)
• The Rise of Historical Criticism (published in incomplete form 1905 and completed form in 1908)
• The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1960) This was rereleased in 2000, with letters uncovered since 1960, and new, detailed, footnotes by Merlin Holland.
• Teleny or The Reverse of the Medal (Paris, 1893) has been attributed to Wilde, but was more likely a combined effort by a several of Wilde's friends, which he may have edited.

English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens's works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy. He had also experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end school in early teens and work in a factory. Dickens's good, bad, and comic characters, such as the cruel miser Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, or the trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated generations of readers.
Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. Dickens's father was a clerk in the navy pay office. He was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. The schoolmaster William Giles gave special attention to Dickens, who made rapid progress. In 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work for some months at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his father John was in Marshalea debtor's prison. "My father and mother were quite satisfied," Dickens later recalled bitterly. "They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge." Later this period found its way to the novel LITTLE DORRITT (1855-57). John Dickens paid his £40 debt with the money he inherited from his mother; she died at the age of seventy-nine when he was still in prison.

In 1824-27 Dickens studied at Wellington House Academy, London, and at Mr. Dawson's school in 1827. From 1827 to 1828 he was a law office clerk, and then a shorthand reporter at Doctor's Commons. After learning shorthand, he could take down speeches word for word. At the age of eighteen, Dickens applied for a reader's ticket at the British Museum, where he read with eager industry the works of Shakespeare, Goldsmith's History of England, and Berger's Short Account of the Roman Senate. He wrote for True Sun (1830-32), Mirror of Parliament (1832-34), and the Morning Chronicle (1834-36). Dickens gained soon the reputation as "the fastest and most accurate man in the Gallery", and he could celebrate his prosperity with "a new hat and a very handsome blue cloak with velvet facings," as one of his friend described his somewhat dandyish outlook. In the 1830s Dickens contributed to Monthly Magazine, and The Evening Chronicle and edited Bentley's Miscellany. These years left Dickens with lasting affection for journalism and suspicious attitude towards unjust laws. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays to appeared in periodicals. 'A Dinner at Poplar Walk' was Dickens's first published sketch. It appeared in the Monthly Magazine in December 1833. It made him so proud, that he later told that "I walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there." SKETCHES BY BOZ, illustrated by George Cruikshank, was published in book form in 1836-37. THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB was published in monthly parts from April 1836 to November 1837.

Dickens's relationship with Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker, whom he had courted for four years, ended in 1833. Three years later Dickens married Catherine Hogart, the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, who edited the newly established Evening Chronicle. With Catherine he had 10 children. They separated in 1858. Some biographers have suspected that Dickens was more fond of Catherine's sister, Mary, who moved into their house and died in 1837 at the age of 17 in Dickens's arms. Eventually she became the model for Dora Copperfield. Dickens also wanted to be buried next to her and wore Mary's ring all his life. Another of Catherine's sisters, Georgiana, moved in with the Dickenses, and the novelist fell in love with her. Dickens also had a long liaison with the actress Ellen Ternan, whom he had met by the late 1850s.

Dickens's sharp ear for conversation helped him to create colorful characters through their own words. In his daily writing Dickens followed certain rules: "He rose at a certain time, he retired at another, and, though no precisian, it was not often that arrangements varied. His hours for writing were between breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done, no temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. The order and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he was governed by rules laid down for himself - rules well studied beforehand, and rarely departed from. " (anonymous friend, in Charles Dickens, An Illustrated Anthology, Cresent Books, 1995)

The Pickwick Papers were stories about a group of rather odd individuals and their travels to Ipswich, Rochester, Bath, and elsewhere. It was sold at 1 shilling the installment (1836-37), and opened up a market for similar inexpensive books. Many of Dickens's following novels first appeared in monthly installments, including OLIVER TWIST (1837-39). It depicts the London underworld and hard years of the foundling Oliver Twist, whose right to his inheritance is kept secret by the villainous Mr. Monks. Oliver suffers in a poorfarm and workhouse. He outrages authorities by asking a second bowl of porridge. From a solitary confinement he is apprenticed to a casket maker, and becomes a member of a gang of young thieves, led by Mr. Fagin. Finally Fagin is hanged at Newgate and Mr. Barnlow adopts Oliver. NICHOLAS NICKELBY (1838-39) was a loosely structured tale of young Nickleby's struggles to seek his fortune.

David Lean's dark, atmospheric version of Oliver Twist from 1948 is among the best films made from Dickens's novels. Lean's young thieves are as hard and professional as the brutal gang members of Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados (1950). Alec Guinness played the old, big-nosed Fagin. The caricature upset some Jews in England, as Dickens's novel had done one hundred and ten years earlier. The Zionists protested that the character was presented in the same way that Jews were vilified in the Nazi paper Der Sturmer. American critics attacked the film's alleged anti-Semitism, and cuts were made before it was shown, with twelve minutes missing, in the American theatres. Lean's stylised Great Expectations (1946), based on Dickens's novel, had been a great success in the U.S. "Grandfather would have loved it," said Monica Dickens, the granddaughter of the author, of the film. With these works Lean has been considered an authority on Dickens.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843) is one of Dickens's most loved works, which has been adapted into screen a number of times. The character of Ebenezer Scrooge, the "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching" miser, has attracted such actors as Seymour Hicks, Albert Finney, Michael Caine, George C. Scott and Alastair Sim. In a pornography version from 1975 Mary Stewart was "Carol Screwge". Historical subjects did not much interest Dickens. BARNABY RUDGE (1841), set at the time of the 'No Popery' riots of 1780, and A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859) are exceptions. The latter was set in the years of the French Revolution. The plot circles around the look-alikes Charles Darnay, a nephews of a marquis, and Sydney Carton, a lawyer, who both love the same woman, Lucy.

Among Dickens's later works is DAVID COPPERFIELD (1849-50), where he used his own personal experiences of work in a factory. David's widowed mother marries the tyrannical Mr. Murdstone. David becomes friends with Mr. Micawber and his family. "I went in, and found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing short-collar on." Dora, David's first wife, dies and he marries Agnes. He pursues his career as a journalist and later as a novelist.

BLEAK HOUSE (1853) belongs to Dickens's greatest works of social social criticism. The novel is built around a lawsuit, the classic case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which affects all who come into contact with it. Much of the story is narrated in the first person by a young woman, Esther Summerson, the illegitimate daughter of the proud Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon. The character of Harold Skimpole, an irresponsinbe and lecherous idler, is said to be based on the poet and journalist Leigh Hunt.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1860-61) began as a serialized publication in Dickens's periodical All the Year Round on December 1, 1860. The story of Pip (Philip Pirrip) was among Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's favorite novels. G.K. Chesterton wrote that it has "a quality of serene irony and even sadness," which according to Chesterton separates it from Dickens's other works. "Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip." Pip, an orphan, lives with his old sister and her husband. He meets an escaped convict named Abel Magwitch and helps him against his will. Magwitch is recaptured and Pip is taken care of Miss Havisham. He falls in love with the cold-hearted Estella, Miss Havisham's ward. With the help of an anonymous benefactor, Pip is properly educated, and he becomes a snob. Magwitch turns out to be the benefactor; he dies and Pip's "great expectations" are ruined. He works as a clerk in a trading firm, and marries Estella, Magwitch's daughter.

Dickens participated energetically in all forms of the social life of the time, "light and motion flashed from every part of it," wrote his friend and future biographer John Forster. In the 1840s Dickens founded Master Humphrey's Cloak and edited the London Daily News. He spent much time travelling and campaigning against many of the social evils with his pamphlets and other writings. In the 1850s Dickens was founding editor of Household World and its successor All the Year Round (1859-70). Although Dickens's works as a novelist are now best remembered, he produced hundreds of essays and edited and rewrote hundreds of others submitted to the various periodicals he edited. Dickens distinguished himself as an essayist in 1834 under the pseudonym Boz. 'A Visit to Newgate' (1836) reflects his own memories of visiting his own family in the Marshalea Prison. 'A Small Star in the East' reveals the working conditions on mills and 'Mr. Barlow' (1869) draws a portrait of an insensitive tutor.

Dickens lived in 1844-45 in Italy, Switzerland and Paris, and from 1860 one his address was at Gadshill Place, near Rochester, Kent, where he lived with his two daughters and sister-in-law. He had also other establishments - Gad's Hill, and Windsor Lodge, Peckham, which he had rented for Ellen Ternan. His wife Catherine lived at the London house. In 1858-68 Dickens gave lecturing tours in Britain and the United States. By the end of his last American tour, Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. In an opium den in Shadwell, Dickens saw an elderly pusher known as Opium Sal, who then featured in his mystery novel THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. He collapsed at Preston, in April 1869, after which his doctors put a stop to his public performances. Dickens died at Gadshill on suddenly of a stroke on June 8, 1870. Some of his friends later thought the readings killed him. Dickens had asked that he should be buried "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner".

Jeffrey Howard Archer, best-selling author and politician. He was a member of Parliament and Deputy Chairman of the (born 15 April 1940) BritishConservative Party, and became a life peer in 1992. His political career, often marked by personal humiliation, ended after a conviction for perjury and his subsequent imprisonment
It has often been said that Jeffrey Archer's own story would make an international bestseller. He was born in London, brought up in Somerset, the son of a printer, and educated at Wellington School, and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he gained an athletics blue,was President of the University Athletics Club, and went on to run
the 100 yards in 9.6 seconds for Great Britain in 1966.
After leaving Oxford he was elected to the Greater London Council,and three years later at the age of 29, he became Member of Parliament for Louth. After five years in the Commons and a promising political career ahead of him, he invested heavily in a Canadian company called Aquablast, on the advice of the Bank of Boston. The
company went into liquidation, and three directors were later sent to
jail for fraud. Left with debts of £427,727, and on the brink of bankruptcy,
he resigned from the House of Commons.Aged 34, determined to repay his creditors in full, he sat down to write his first novel Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. Written at
the home of his former Oxford Principal, it was taken up by the Literary Agent, Debbie Owen, and sold to 17 countries within a year.It was also made into a successful serial for BBC Radio 4, and was later televised in 1990 by the BBC.
His second novel, Shall We Tell the President?, a fast moving thriller about a plot to assassinate Edward Kennedy while he was President of the United States, later up-dated by the author substituting Florentyna Kane, from The Prodigal Daughter,for Edward Kennedy.
With two bestsellers behind him, Kane and Abel came next. The book told the story of two men, one Polish, an illegitimate son of a gypsy, the other rich and privileged from a wealthy Boston banking family. Abel Rosnovski survives countless setbacks,
immigrates to the US and builds up a thriving hotel chain. William Kane inherits a powerful bank and makes it more successful. Their paths cross only once but the meeting causes them to become bitter enemies, each determined to destroy the other. The novel became a number one best-seller in hardcover and paperback all over the world. The Coronet edition alone has sold over 3,250,000 copies. and has sold over 3.5 million in the UK paperback edition alone.
Jeffrey followed this with A Quiver Full of Arrows, a varied collection of short stories that received major critical acclaim, and three of which were dramatised for the Anglia TV series Tales of the Unexpected.
This was followed by The Prodigal Daughter, the sequel to Kane and Abel. And then came the novel Jeffrey Archer was destined to write, with his detailed knowledge and past experience as a Member of Parliament, First Among Equals. It followed
the fortunes of four ambitious new MPs who took their seats at Westminster for the first time in the early 1960s. It became an award winning television series for Granada.
In 1986, Jeffrey Archer published A Matter of Honour: a tale about a letter that was never opened by the keeper, only to be passed on to his son after his death. It is the opening of this letter that changes one family's lives forever.
His next book, A Twist in the Tale, was a second set of short stories that gained more plaudits from the critics including The New York Times: 'Jeffrey Archer plays a subtle cat-and-mouse game with the reader, a collection of twelve short stories that end, more often than not, with collective whiskers twitching in surprise'.
His next novel, As the Crow Flies, was published in June 1992, a saga that opens in the east end of London at the turn of the century and follows the career of Charlie Trumper, who starts life as a coster-monger. Trumper returns to the Whitechapel Road 70 years later having only travelled a distance of five miles in his life.
Honour Among Thieves was published in July 1993 and was a number one best-seller from London to Tokyo. He followed this with a set of 12 short stories, Twelve Red Herrings, published in July 1994. The Fourth Estate, based on the lives of
Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell, was published in 1996. In 1997, all of Jeffrey's short stories were released in one volume as Collected Short Stories.
Jeffrey's 10th novel, The Eleventh Commandment, in which the action moves from the White House to a Russian Mafia Boss's luxurious hideaway outside St. Petersburg, was published in May 1998, and spent 24 weeks on The Sunday Times Bestseller's List.
Jeffrey Archer's fourth book of short stories, To Cut a Long Story Short, was published in March 2000. His novel, Sons of Fortune, was published by Macmillan in December 2002, and his latest novel, False Impression, in March 2006.
Jeffrey Archer is also a playwright, and after the General Election in 1987, he wrote his first play Beyond Reasonable Doubt, which ran at the Queen's Theatre in London's West End for over 600 performances, and starred Frank Finlay and Wendy Craig. His second play, Exclusive, ran at the Strand Theatre for 100 performances, and starred Paul Scofield, Eileen Atkins and Alec McCowen.
His most recent play, The Accused, published by Methuen in October 2000, starred Edward Petherbridge, Michael Feast and Tony Britton, and is a courtroom drama with a twist; the audience acts as the jury, and decide which of two different endings the play should have - guilty or innocent. Jeffrey took on his first West End role, playing the part of the accused.The play completed a very successful nine-week regional tour, before playing at the Theatre Royal Haymarket for a limited eight-week run.
Jeffrey Archer was Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party from September 1985 until November 1986. In 1991, he was co-ordinator for the Campaign for Kurdish Relief, and he is also an amateur auctioneer, having raised more than £10 million in the last 10 years. Jeffrey Archer was made a Life Peer in the Queen's Birthday Honours List of 992.
Having run a successful campaign for Mayor of London for two-and-a-half years, from 1997, Jeffrey Archer was selected as the official Conservative Party Candidate for London's Mayor in October 1999 by an overwhelming majority. In November that same year, he withdrew his candidacy, having been charged with perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment, and was released in July 2003, having served two years. Now published in 63 countries and more than 32 languages, Jeffrey Archer is firmly established, with international sales
passing 125 million copies.Jeffrey completed the Flora London Marathon on April 18 th 2004, in 5 hours 26 mins, raising money for the Make-Awish Foundation UK, the British Heart Foundation, the Fund for Addenbrooke's and the Facial Surgery Research
Foundation. He was overtaken by a camel, a phone-box and a girl walking. He has no plans to repeat the experience.
Jeffrey has also written an original screenplay, Mallory: Walking off the Map, which he hopes will go into production with the Oscar-winning director, Bruce Beresford. He has also completed the screenplay to his latest novel, False Impression.
In February, 2006, Jeffrey was awarded the Honorary Patronage of the University Philosophical Society, commonly known as The Phil.
Jeffrey has been married for 40 years to Dr Mary Archer, who is chairman of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (incorporating Addenbrooke’s and the Rosie Hospitals in Cambridge). They have two sons, William and James. They divide their time between homes in London and Cambridge.

Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read and two years later discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, thus capturing the heroic vision which sustained her throughout her life. At the age of nine she decided to make fiction writing her career. Thoroughly opposed to the mysticism and collectivism of Russian culture, she thought of herself as a European writer, especially after encountering Victor Hugo, the writer she most admired.

During her high school years, she was eyewitness to both the Kerensky Revolution, which she supported, and�in 1917�the Bolshevik Revolution, which she denounced from the outset. In order to escape the fighting, her family went to the Crimea, where she finished high school. The final Communist victory brought the confiscation of her father's pharmacy and periods of near-starvation. When introduced to American history in her last year of high school, she immediately took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be.

When her family returned from the Crimea, she entered the University of Petrograd to study philosophy and history. Graduating in 1924, she experienced the disintegration of free inquiry and the takeover of the university by communist thugs. Amidst the increasingly gray life, her one great pleasure was Western films and plays. Long an admirer of cinema, she entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screenwriting.

In late 1925 she obtained permission to leave Soviet Russia for a visit to relatives in the United States. Although she told Soviet authorities that her visit would be short, she was determined never to return to Russia. She arrived in New York City in February 1926. She spent the next six months with her relatives in Chicago, obtained an extension to her visa, and then left for Hollywood to pursue a career as a screenwriter.

On Ayn Rand's second day in Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille saw her standing at the gate of his studio, offered her a ride to the set of his movie The King of Kings, and gave her a job, first as an extra, then as a script reader. During the next week at the studio, she met an actor, Frank O'Connor, whom she married in 1929; they were married until his death fifty years later.

After struggling for several years at various nonwriting jobs, including one in the wardrobe department at the RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., she sold her first screenplay, "Red Pawn," to Universal Pictures in 1932 and saw her first stage play, Night of January 16th, produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. Her first novel, We the Living, was completed in 1934 but was rejected by numerous publishers, until The Macmillan Company in the United States and Cassells and Company in England published the book in 1936. The most autobiographical of her novels, it was based on her years under Soviet tyranny.

She began writing The Fountainhead in 1935. In the character of the architect Howard Roark, she presented for the first time the kind of hero whose depiction was the chief goal of her writing: the ideal man, man as "he could be and ought to be." The Fountainhead was rejected by twelve publishers but finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. When published in 1943, it made history by becoming a best seller through word-of-mouth two years later, and gained for its author lasting recognition as a champion of individualism.

Ayn Rand returned to Hollywood in late 1943 to write the screenplay for The Fountainhead, but wartime restrictions delayed production until 1948. Working part time as a screenwriter for Hal Wallis Productions, she began her major novel, Atlas Shrugged, in 1946. In 1951 she moved back to New York City and devoted herself full time to the completion of Atlas Shrugged.

Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was her greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. Although she considered herself primarily a fiction writer, she realized that in order to create heroic fictional characters, she had to identify the philosophic principles which make such individuals possible.

Thereafter, Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on her philosophy�Objectivism, which she characterized as "a philosophy for living on earth.". She published and edited her own periodicals from 1962 to 1976, her essays providing much of the material for six books on Objectivism and its application to the culture. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982, in her New York City apartment.

Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime is still in print, and hundreds of thousands of copies are sold each year, so far totalling more than twenty million. Several new volumes have been published posthumously. Her vision of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of thousands of readers and launched a philosophic movement with a growing impact on American culture.

Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, he was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby�writing his first novel.

Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn't have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.

One day at the DeSoto County courthouse, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.

That might have put an end to Grisham's hobby. However, he had already begun his next book, and it would quickly turn that hobby into a new full-time career�and spark one of publishing's greatest success stories. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared. When he sold the film rights to The Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became a hot property among publishers, and book rights were bought by Doubleday. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991.

The successes of The Pelican Brief, which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham's reputation as the master of the legal thriller. Grisham's success even renewed interest in A Time to Kill, which was republished in hardcover by Doubleday and then in paperback by Dell. This time around, it was a bestseller.

Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year (his other books are The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, A Painted House, Skipping Christmas, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror, and The Broker) and all of them have become international bestsellers. There are currently over 225 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 29 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. The Innocent Man (October 2006) marks his first foray into non-fiction.

Grisham lives with his wife Renee and their two children Ty and Shea. The family splits their time between their Victorian home on a farm in Mississippi and a plantation near Charlottesville, VA.

Grisham took time off from writing for several months in 1996 to return, after a five-year hiatus, to the courtroom. He was honoring a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a full-time writer: representing the family of a railroad brakeman killed when he was pinned between two cars. Preparing his case with the same passion and dedication as his books' protagonists, Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500�the biggest verdict of his career.

When he's not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.8 million dollars for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams.

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American novelist and short-story writer, whose enormously popular books revived the interest in horror fiction from the 1970s. King's place in the modern horror fiction can be compared to that of J.R.R. Tolkien's who created the modern genre of fantasy. Like Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens or Balzac in his La Comédie humaine, King has expressed the fundamental concerns of his era, and used the horror genre as his own branch of artistic expression. King has underlined, that even in the world of cynicism, despair, and cruelties, it remains possible for individuals to find love and discover unexpected resources in themselves. His characters often conquer their own problems and malevolent powers that would suppress or destroy them.

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine. His father, a merchant seaman, deserted the family in 1950. The young Stephen and his brother David were raised in Durham, Maine, by their mother who worked in odd jobs to support her children. At the age of six, he had his eardrum punctured several times - a painful experience which he never forgot. King attended a grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High school, where he started to write short stories and played in an amateur rock band. In 1960 he submitted his first story for publication - it was rejected. He edited the school newspaper, The Drum, and also wrote for the local newspaper, Lisbon Weekly Enterprise. His first story, entitled 'In a Half-World of Terror', King published in a horror fanzine. In 1970 King graduated from the University of Maine. Next year he married Tabitha Spruce, who has also gained fame as a writer. "My wife is the person in my life who's most likely to say I'm working too hard, it's time to slow down, stay away from that damn PowerBook for a little while, Steve, give it a rest." (from On Writing, 2000) Most of his career King has lived in Bangor, Maine. Many of his books are set in the imaginary town of Castle Rock, Maine, which is totally destroyed by greed in Needful Things (1993).

From 1971 to 1974 King was an instructor at the Hampden Academy, earning $6,400 a year. His first novel, Carrie (1974), was a tale of a girl with telekinetic powers. King had thrown the first pages of the story in a garbage pail, but his wife rescued them and urged him to finish the work. Carrie had first only a moderate success and sold 13 000 copies in hardcover. However, Signet paid $400,000 for its paperback rights. Carrie's film version was launched in 1976 and after the breakthrough novel Salem's Lot (1976), King established quickly his reputation as a major horror writer. In the late summer of 1974 King moved with his family to Colorado for an extended holiday. He visited the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, and set there his next novel, The Shining. Stanley Kubrick's film version of the book, from 1977, did not satisfy the author, and he King himself turned his novel into a television miniseries in 1997.

In the late 1970s King published his first paperbacks under the name of Richard Bachman. The Talisman (1984) and its sequel, The Black House (2001), were written with Peter Staub. King has also published non-fiction. In his collection of essays, Danse Macabre (1981), King described the writing process as a kind of "dance" in which the author searches out the private fears of each reader. In the textbook of macabre he goes through the horror genre, from film monsters to books, focusing mostly on the post-war era. "It's not a dance of death at all, not really. There is a third lever here, as well. It is, at bottom, a dance of dreams. It's a way of awakening the child inside, who never dies but only sleeps ever more deeply. If the horror story is rehearsal for death, then its strict moralities make it also a reaffirmation of life and good will and simple imagination - just one more pipeline to the infinite." (from Dance Macabre)

After writing The Pet Sematary King considered he don't need to publish his "thebmost wretched, awful thing" he made, Bag of Bones (1998). The story dealt with the grief process in an uncompromising way. In Bag of Bones King returned to the theme of loss of a family member, and added into it the classical haunted house idea and familiar elements from his previous works: a small town where people know more than they tell, the collective guilty, and a hero who can't avoid confrontation with the evil powers. Old crimes, sins and secrets, hidden deep, are gradually revealed in an analysis of the conscious and unconscious like on a Freud's sofa. Playing with fire, King plunges into the mind of Mike Noonan, an author who suffers from the writer's block. Noonan's wife has died unexpectedly and he retreats to Sara Laughs, their happy home during summers. There he meets a young mother, Mattie, and her daughter, whom he helps in an custody struggle. - Mattie is one of the liveliest characters in King's works. Her sudden death, a logical twist of the plot, comes like electric shock. In the last pages of the novel Noonan/King returns to it and states correctly that 'to think I might have written such a hellishly convenient death in a book, ever, sickens me.' Bag of Bones continues the series where King explorers the writing process and the work of an author. The Shining, Misery, The Dark Half and now Bag of Bones are among his most revealing and personal works. - King is not among those writers who claim that they don't have time to read. Bag of Bones offers a delightful analysis of Herman Melville's story Bartleby, and comments about books and authors. Among them is Thomas Hardy, who stopped writing novels at the peak of his career and changed into poetry. Hardy supposedly said, that the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones.

A number of King's stories have been adapted into screen, among others Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), Misery (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1995), and The Green Mile (1999). His novels are richly textured with multitudinous references to films, television, rock music, literature, popular culture, and in his own books. Several of early King's novels explored the agonies of childhood, parental neglect and abuse (Carrie; Firestarter, 1980). In the 1980s his perspective shifted into the various pains of adulthood, the loneliness of older people (It, 1986; Insomnia, 1994). He has also provided fully-realized women characters in such novels as Gerald's Game (1992), Dolores Clairborne (1993), and Rose Madder (1995).

King's Dark Tower series, which started in 1982 with The Gunslinger, has combined Tolkien's sense of wonder with a horror and Sergio-Leone influenced Western. Partly the novel is based on Robert Browning's narrative poem, 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'. The world of Roland has many intertextual relationships with King's other books and maps the boundaries of his imagination or universe. Occasionally characters cross over from one genre to another, from fantasy to realism. Roland and his friends, other gunslingers, are helped by the Old Fella, Father Callahan from Salem's Lot.

King confesses in On Writing that he had problems with alcohol as early as in 1975, when he wrote The Shining, and he also developed in the 1980s a drung addiction. In June 1999 King was struck by a van and seriously injured. Soon after the accident, in July, King began publishing a serial novel, entitled The Plant, at his website, stephenking.com. In the story a supernatural vine starts to grow in a paperback publishing house. It brings success and riches and all it wants in return is a little drop of blood, a little flesh. King also announced that he will not continue with the story if payments for downloading the work fall off. "What made The Plant such a hilarious Internet natural (at least to my admittedly twisted mind) was that publishers and media people seem to see exactly this sort of monster whenever they contemplate the Net in general and e-lit in particular: a troublesome strangler fig that just might have a bit o' the old profit in it. If, that is, it's handled with gloves." (King in Time, January 8, 2001) While convalescing from the accident, King returned to his early career as a writer in On Writing (2000), but most of all, the book gives down-to-earth advises for aspiring writers. "Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do." In February 2002 King revealed to the Los Angeles Times that he has decided to stop publishing at year's end after finishing the last three novels in his "Dark Tower" series, and some other works. In 2003 King received the National Book Award. Its previous recipients include John Updike, Arthur Miller, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison.

From the beginning of his career, King has examined the demons that are hidden behind the work of an author. In Misery a monstrous muse forces the writer into a slavery in front of typewriter. The writer is addicted to his work, but at the same time he is haunted by the demands of his fans. Although King is respected as a major force in popular fiction, his books blend the line between high art and pulp culture. In The Shining the writer, Jack Torrance, a former alcoholic, attacks his own family, and in The Dark Half (1898) he must fight against the demon of his own imagination. This self-conscious way to approach the art of fiction is also seen in King's controlled use of images that are meant to scare the reader. In Hearts in Atlantis (1999) typical horror elements are reduced as a metaphor of lost innocence. In the story King pointedly refers to William Golding's modern classic, Lord of the Flies.

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Frederick Forsyth was born in August 1938 in Ashford, Kent, England, and was educated at Tonbridge school, and later Granada University, Spain. He started work as one of the youngest pilots in the RAF at the age of 19, serving from 1956 to 1958. For the next three and a half years he worked as a reporter for the Eastern Daily Press in Norfolk, before becoming a correspondant for Reuters in 1961, first in Paris, at the age of twenty-three, and then in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, locations which provided him with information for his first books. Returning to London in 1965, he worked as a radio and television reporter for the BBC. As assistant diplomatic correspondent, he covered the Biafran side of the Biafra-Nigeria war from July to September 1967, and this provided him with knowledge of international politics, and the world of mercenary soldiors. It was this work and related research that interested him with historical truth. In 1968 he left the BBC to return to Biafra, and he reported on the war, first as a freelance and later for the Daily Express and Time magazine.
Forsyth decided to write a novel using similar research techniques to those used in journalism. His first full length novel, The Day of the Jackal, was published in 1971 and became an international bestseller. It was later made into a film of the same name. It also earned him the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. In this book, the Organisation armée secrète hires an assassin to kill Charles de Gaulle.

His second novel, The Odessa File, was published in 1972 and is about a reporter attempting to track down a certain ex-Nazi SS officer in modern Germany, whom he discovered via the diary of a Jewish Holocaust survivor that committed suicide early in the book, who was being shielded by the organization that protects ex-Nazis, called ODESSA. As it turns out, the reporter discovers that this same SS officer killed a German Army officer during World War II for striking him after refusing to let SS soldiers take the place of his own wounded men. The officer that was killed was the reporter's father. This book was later made into a movie with the same name, starring Jon Voight, but there were substantial adaptations. For example, the black Jaguar auto with yellow streaks depicted in the story, itself a thrill designed to engross the reader, was replaced by a Mercedes-Benz.

In 1974, he wrote The Dogs of War, in which a British mining executive hires a group of mercenaries to overthrow the government of an African country so that he can install a puppet regime that will allow him cheap access to its substantial mineral wealth.

The Shepherd was an illustrated novella published in 1975. It tells of a nightmare journey by a RAF pilot while flying home for Christmas in the late 1950s. His attempts to find a rational explanation for his eventual rescue prove as troublesome as his experience. Following this came The Devil's Alternative in 1979, which was set in 1982. In this book, the Soviet Union faces a disastrous grain harvest and Ukrainian freedom fighters. A Politburo faction fight ensues. In the end, a Norwegian oil tanker built in Japan, a Russian airliner hijacked to West Berlin and various governments find themselves involved.

In 1982, No Comebacks, a collection of ten short stories, was published. Some of these stories had been written earlier. Many were set in the Irish Republic where Forsyth was living at the time. One of them, There Are No Snakes In Ireland, won him a second Edgar Allan Poe Award, this time for best short story.

The Fourth Protocol was published in 1984 and involves renegade elements within the Soviet Union attempting to plant a nuclear bomb near an American airbase in the UK, intending to influence the upcoming British elections and lead to the election of an anti-NATO, anti-American, anti-nuclear, pro-soviet Labour government. The Fourth Protocol was later filmed, starring Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine, in 1987. All the political content was removed from the film, which took a lot away from the original story.

Forsyth's tenth release came in 1989, when he wrote The Negotiator, in which the American President's son is kidnapped and one man's job is to negotiate his release.

Two years later, in 1991, The Deceiver was published. It includes four separate short stories reviewing the career of British secret agent Sam McCready. At the start of the book, the Permanent Under-Secretary (PUS) of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office requires the Chief of the SIS to push Sam into early retirement. The four stories are presented to a grievance committee in an attempt to allow Sam to stay on active duty with the SIS.

In 1994, Forsyth published The Fist of God, about the first Gulf War. Next, in 1996, he published Icon, about the rise of fascists to power in post-Soviet Russia.

In 1999, Forsyth published The Phantom of Manhattan, a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera. It was intended as a departure from his usual genre; Forsyth's explanation was that "I had done mercenaries, assassins, Nazis, murders, terrorists, special forces soldiers, fighter pilots, you name it, and I got to think, could I actually write about the human heart?"[1] However, it did not achieve the same success as his other novels, and he subsequently returned to modern-day thrillers.
In 2001, The Veteran, another collection of short stories, was published followed by the Avenger, published in September 2003, about a Canadian billionaire who hires a Vietnam veteran to bring his grandson's killer to the US.

His latest book is the The Afghan published in August 2006 is an indirect sequel to The Fist of God. Set in the very near future, the threat of a catastrophic assault on the West, discovered on a senior al-Qaeda member's computer, compels the leaders of the U.S. and the U.K. to attempt a desperate gambit�to substitute a seasoned British operative, retired Col. Mike Martin, for an Afghan Taliban commander being held prisoner at Guantánamo Bay.

English poet, dramatist, and actor, considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time. Some of Shakespeare's plays, such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, are among the most famous literary works of the world. However, his early works did not match the artistic quality of Marlowe's dramas. Ben Jonson (1572-1637), another contemporary playwright, wrote that Shakespeare's "wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too". Shakespeare possessed a large vocabulary for his day, having used 29,066 different words in his plays. Today the average English-speaking person uses something like 2,000 words in everyday speech.

There is not much records of Shakespeare´s personal life. Rumors arise from time to time that he did not write his plays, but the real author was Christopher Marlowe, Queen Elizabeth or Edward De Vere (1550-1604), whom T.J. Looney identified in 1920 as the author of Shakespeare's plays. A large body of 'Oxfordians' have since built on this claim and the reluctance to believe that a man of humble origins could be such a great author. According to some numerologists, Shakespeare wrote The King James Version of the Bible at the age of 46. Their "evidence": Shake is the 46th word of the 46th Psalm, Spear is the 46th word from the end in the 46th Psalm.

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small country town. Stratford was famous for its malting. The black plague killed in 1564 one out of seven of the town's 1,500 inhabitants. Shakespeare was the eldest son of Mary Arden, the daughter of a local landowner, and her husband, John Shakespeare (c. 1530-1601), a glover and wood dealer. John Aubrey (1626-1697) tells in Brief Lives that Shakespeare's father was a butcher and the young William exercised his father's trade, "but when he kill'd a Calfe he would do it in a high style, and make a speech." In 1568 John Shakespeare was made a mayor of Stratford and a justice of peace. His wool business failed in the 1570s, and in 1580 he was fined £40, with other 140 men, for failing to find surety to keep the peace. There is not record that his fine was paid. Later the church commissioners reported of him and eight other men that they had failed to attend church "for fear of process for debt". The family's position was restored in the 1590s by earnings of William Shakespeare, and in 1596 he was awarded a coat of arms.

Very little is known about Shakespeare early life, and his later works have inspired a number of interpretations. T.S. Eliot wrote that "I would suggest that none of the plays of Shakespeare has a "meaning," although it would be equally false to say that a play of Shakespeare is meaningless." (from Selected Essays, new edition, 1960). Shakespeare is assumed to have been educated at Stratford Grammar School, and he may have spent the years 1580-82 as a teacher for the Roman Catholic Houghton family in Lancashire. When Shakespeare was 15, a woman from a nearby village drowned in the Avon. Her death was ruled accidental but it may have been a suicide. Later in Hamlet Shakespeare left open the question whether Ophelia died accidentally or by her own hand. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married a local girl, Anne Hathaway (died 1623), who was eight years older. Their first child, Susannah, was born within six months, and twins Hamnet and Judith were born in 1585. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died in 1596, at the age of 11. It has often been suggested, that the lines in King John, beginning with "Grief fills the room of my absent child", reflects Shakespeare's grief.

Hamlet was first printed in 1603. It is Shakespeare's largest drama, based on a lost play known as the Ur-Hamlet. Prince Hamlet, an enigmatic intellectual, mourns both his father's death and his mother's remarriage. His father's ghost appears to him and tells that Claudius, married to Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, poisoned him. Hamlet, fascinated by cruelly witty games, swears revenge. "The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!" He arranges an old play whose story has a parallel to that of Claudius. Hamlet's behavior is considered mad. He kills the eavesdropping Polonius, the court chamberlain, by thrusting his sword through a curtain. Polonius's son Laertes returns to Denmark to avenge his father's death. Polonius's daughter Ofelia loves Hamlet, but the prince's sadistically brutal behavior drives her to madness. "Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" he tells Ophelia who dies by drowning. Before the slaughter that ends the story, Hamlet says to his friend Horatio: "I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart." A duel takes place and ends with the death of Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet, whose final words are "the rest is silence."

According to a legend, he left Stratford for London to avoid a charge of poaching. After 1582 Shakespeare probably joined as an actor one or several companies of players. By 1584 he emerged as a rising playwright in London, and became soon a central figure in London´s leading theater company, the Lord Chamberlain´s Company, renamed later as the King´s Men. He wrote many great plays for the group. In 1599 a new theater, called The Globe, was built.

Shakespeare was known in his day as a very rapid writer: "His mind and hand went together," his publishers Heminges and Condell reported, "and what he thought, he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Despite all the praise, some writer's were not enthusiastic about his plays. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) called A Midsummer Night's Dream "the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life." Voltaire wrote: "Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada," "Shakespeare is the Corneille of London, but everywhere else he is a great fool..." Shakespeare wrote also two heroic narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593) and Lucrece (1594). His sonnets were written earliest by 1598 and published in 1609. The sonnets refer cryptically to several persons, among them a handsome young man, a woman called the 'Dark Lady', and a rival poet. Shakespeare's name was also on the title page of The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), issued by the publisher William Jaggard. The identity of the brunette, who appreared in Shakespeare's later poems, has been a mystery. According to one theory, she was the Countess of Pembroke. George Bernard Shaw believed she was one of Elizabeth I's ladies-in-waiting, Mary Fritton. Some have thought she was the mother of Shakespeare's supposed illegitimate son, Henry Davenant. Or she might have been Marie Mountjoy, Shakespeare's London landlady, or the black prostitute Luce Morgan, or Emilia Bassano, the daughter of a court musician and mistress of the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon. And there is a theory that the Dark Lady was not a "she" at all, but Shakespeare's patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.

Romeo and Juliet was based on real lovers who lived in Verona, Italy, and died for each other in the year 1303. At that time the Capulets and Montagues were among the inhabitants of the town. Shakespeare found the tale in Arthur Brooke's poem 'The Tragical Historye of Romeus and Juliet' (1562). The play has inspired other works, such as Berlioz's dramatic symphony (1839), Tchaikovsky's fantasy-overture (1869-80), and Prokofiev's full-length ballet (1938). The Tempest, often considered Shakespeare's farewell to his theatrical art, has inspired Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, and Jean Sibelius, who wrote music for it in 1926.

About 1610 Shakespeare returned to his birthplace, where he had a house, called New Place. He lived as a country gentleman, drank beer, and co-wrote with John Fletcher The Two Noble Kinsmen, first published in 1634. A number of Shakespeare's plays were published during his lifetime, but none of the original dramatic manuscripts have survived. The original Globe burned down in 1613, but was rebuilt next year. Shakespeare's later plays were also performed at the Blackfriars Theatre, which was run by a seven-man syndicate. Shakespeare was one of its members. Shakespeare's company used the Globe in the summer and the indoor Blackfrian in the winter. Under the patronage of King James I, the company also performed at court, more often than during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The dramatist John Dennis (1657-1734) claimed, that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written at her command. Macbeth, with its witches and portrayal of the legendary ancestor of the Stuart kings, Banquo, had a special appeal to James. He had also written a book about demology.

Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. His widow was legally entitled to a third of the estate. Shakespeare also bequeathed his "second-best bed" to his wife - at that time the best bed was the grand prize of a forfeited estate. Anne Hathaway died seven years after her husband. Accroding to a story, she and her daughter wished to be buried in Shakespeare's grave.

In 1623 appeared a folio edition of Shakespeare's collected works - known as the First Folio. On Shakespeare's gravestone are four lines of verse. It is not certain that the Bard of Avon wrote the famous epitaph: "Good friend, for Jesus´ sake forbeare / To digg the dust enclosed here! / Blest be ye man that spares thes stones / And curst be he that moues my bones." However, in the text there is an onomatopoetic to his name, with "sake" in the first line, and "spares" in the third.

Scottish writer who became known for his well crafted adventure thrillers. The sea or the icy north was MacLean's favorite setting, from H.M.S. Ulysses (1955) and Ice Station Zebra (1963) to his late collection of short stories, The Lonely Sea (1985). A number of MacLean's books gained a huge success as films, among them Where Eagles Dare, starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton, The Guns of Navarone, starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn, Ice Station Zebra, and Breakheart Pass, starring Charles Bronson.

Alistair MacLean was born in Glasgow, the son of a minister. The family spoke the Scottish language, Gaelic, and English was MacLean's second language. The family moved north to Daviot, near Inverness, and MacLean spent his early years in the Scottish Highlands. His father died when Alistair was 14, and he returned to Glasgow with his mother. He left school at 17 and at the age of eighteen in 1941, MacLean joined the Royal Navy. He served during World War II as a torpedo man in Home, Mediterranean and Eastern Fleets. Much of the time he served on Russian convoy routes, and from these experiences he drew heavily for his novels about the sea. Later MacLean claimed that he was once captured by the Japanese and tortured, but his story has not been verified. However, in 1946 he returned home.

After the war, MacLean gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a teacher at Gallowfleet Secondary School. During his spare time MacLean began writing short stories. In 1954 he entered a short story competition of the Glasgow Herald with the 'Dileas.' It won the first prize of £100. The depiction of the force of the sea was from a born storyteller: "The Dileas would totter up on a wave then, like she was falling over a cliff, smash down into the next trough with the crack of a four-inch gun, burying herself right to the gunwales. And at the same time you could hear the fierce clatter of her screw, clawing at the thin air. Why the Dileas never broke her back only God knows - or the ghost of Campbell of Ardrishaig."

With encouragement from the publishing company Collins, MacLean wrote his first novel, H.M.S. Ulysses. It was based on his experiences on a navy ship escorting merchant vessels in the Arctic Ocean and became a bestseller. H.M.S. Ulysses is regarded alongside Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny (1951) and Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea (1951) as one of the classic novels of navy ships. It deals with a convoy in the North Atlantic battling during World War II with submarines and foul weather. The emotional power in the end of the story, when the doomed Ulysses turns against the heavy German cruiser, has not been surpassed in any other naval war novel.

From 1955 MacLean devoted himself entirely to writing, with great success. His next books, Guns of Navarone (1957) and South by Java Head (1957), were war stories. The Guns of Navarone (1957) depicted a five men sabotage team sent to destroy two giant guns at Navarone. The book was filmed in 1961 and won an Academy Award for special effects. The producer and screenwriter Carl Foreman bought the screen rights of The Guns of Navarone in 1958. He was fascinated by the author's "gift for keeping his audience enthralled by the pace and drive of his tale. The novel had six colorful major characters, providing an opportunity for casting as many international stars." Gregory Peck played Captain Mallory in the film and was criticized for being at times a trifle wooden - David Niven was Corporal Miller. The women Foreman wrote into the story were played by the Greek actress Irene Papas and the Italian Gia Scala. In its sequel, Force 10 from Navarone (1968), a mixed group attempt to blow up a bridge vital to the Nazis in Yugoslavia. The film version was not produced until 1977. Robert Shaw and Edward Fox played the Peck and Niven roles respectively. Force 10 from Navarone did not gain success similar to its predecessor.

With The Last Frontier (1959) MacLean left war stories behind for a while. The novel was a spy adventure in which an agent is sent behind the iron curtain to rescue an English scientist. In the early 1960s MacLean wrote two novels under the pseudonym of Ian Stuart. The Satan Bug, dealing with the disappearance of a deadly toxin from behind the locked doors of a laboratory, and The Dark Crusader, about a tough secret agent in a Polynesian island, were both Cold War thrillers. MacLean did not try to change his style, and readers familiar with his work easily recognized the author behind his Scottish pseudonym.

Between the years 1957 and 1963 MacLean lived in Geneva. He owned Jamaica Inn, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, and in the 1960s ran hotels in England for four years. During that period, nearly all MacLean's novels were adapted for the screen. Among them were Where Eagles Dare (1967), in which a team of special soldiers is commissioned to destroy the headquarter of the German alpine corps, and Ice Station Zebra (1963). In this espionage story a British weather-monitoring station on a polar ice cap is almost totally destroyed by an oil fire. The United States nuclear submarine Dolphin is sent to rescue the team. The narrator and protagonist is a doctor, but later it turns out that he is not simply a doctor and Ice Station Zebra is not just a neutral research station. In fact Dolphin's quest is to recover a capsule from outer space containing a long-range, top-secret reconnaissance camera and its films.

Usually MacLean's heroes are calm, cynical men who are devoted to their work, and carry some kind of secret knowledge. "The job, the job, always the job on hand," the colonel had repeated once, twice, a thousand times, "Success or failure in what you do may be desperately important to others, but it must never matter a damn to you." (from The Last Frontier, 1959) The heroes fight against incredible odds and of course there are the evil opponents, a wide variety of humorless villains, the Nazis, terrorists, Communists, drug dealers, and foreign agents. During the course of the story, the protagonist is pushed to the limits of his physical and sometimes mental endurance. Nature is a central element in MacLean's work, especially the North Atlantic Seas, ice mountains, deep gulches, desert quicksands, frozen Arctic tundra. Even the ordinary Central European winter conditions are nearly fatal to MacLean's hero in The Secret Ways (1959): "Only the snow was real, the snow and that bone-deep, sub-zero cold that shrouded him from head to toe in a blanket of ice and continuously shook his entire body in violent, uncontrollable spasms of shivering, like a man suffering from ague."

Typical of MacLean's novels are the highly dramatic settings and the sudden plot twist. He allows nothing to hold up the action - there is not much sex in MacLean's books because according to him it hinders the action. MacLean himself had a very clear concept of his work: "I'm not a novelist, I'm a storyteller. There is no art in what I do, no mystique." The protagonist often hides his knowledge, and sometimes one of his closest associates turns out to be a traitor. In MacLean's Western, Breakheart Pass (1974), the federal agent John Deakin poses as a thief, a murderer, and a coward. In Fear is The Key (1961), a novel of revenge, the protagonist pretends to be a gangster. The story starts when he shoots his way out of a courtroom, takes a hostage, and starts his escape. In fact he has conceived an elaborate plot to track down those responsible for killing his wife and family in a plane crash. The protagonist has his revenge, but he finally realizes that he is alone with his victory and memoirs: "X 13. I supposed that would always be a part of me now, that and the broken-winged DC that lay 580 yards to its south-west, buried under 480 feet of water. For better or for worse, it would always be a part of me. For worse, I thought, for worse. It was all over and done and empty now and it all meant nothing, for that was all that was left."

MacLean's later books were not as well received as his earlier ones. The Way to Dusty Death (1973) was set in the world of racing cars, and The Golden Gate (1976) was a kidnapping story, in which the President of the United States and two Arab leaders are taken hostage in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. The master criminal Branson wants money for his hostages: "This is the United States of America, the richest country in the world, not a banana republic. What's three hundred million dollars? A couple of Polaris submarines? A tiny fraction of what it cost to send a man to the moon? A fraction of one per cent of the gross national product? If I take one drop from the American bucket who's going to miss it _ but if I'm not allowed to take it then a lot of people are going to miss you, Mr President, and your Arabian friends."

"I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing," MacLean once stated in an interview. "I wrote each book in thirty-five days flat - just to get the darned thing finished." In the 1960s and 1970s MacLean was one of the best selling thriller writers in the world. He had retired as a tax exile to Switzerland and published books, in which the characters sometimes save the world as in Goodbye California (1978). It dealt with the threat of a major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, an event that would wash much of the state of California into the sea. In Santorini (1986), a plane carrying hydrogen and atom bombs drops into the sea in an area subject to volcanic eruptions - and one of the bombs is ticking.

MacLean had started his career as a short story writer, and a few years before his death he published The Lonely Sea, a collection of stories, in which he proved again his skill in describing the power of the sea. The book included his very first prize-winning achievement, a tale of an old seaman who takes an old fishing boat out in a storm in order to rescue his two sons. "And then a miracle happened. Just that, Mr MacLean - a miracle. It was the Sea of Galilee all over again. Mind you, the waves were as terrible as ever, but just for a moment the wind dropped away to a deathly hush - and suddenly, off to starboard, a thin, high-pitched wail came keening out of the darkness." MacLean died of heart failure in Munich on February 2, 1987. He was buried in Celigny, Switzerland. MacLean left a number of story outlines, commissioned by an American film company, to be written by other authors. He was married twice, first to Gisela MacLean; they had three sons, and then to Marcelle Gorgeus in 1972.

American novelist, best-known for his Godfather saga. The novel stayed on The New York Times' best-seller list for sixty-seven weeks. Puzo's book had a deep impact on American society through its film adaptation, and the saying "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse" has became a cliché. However, Puzo always claimed that he had never met a gangster in his life before the book appeared.

Mario Puzo was born into an immigrant family in New York City in the area known as 'Hell's Kitchen'. His father was a railway trackman. Puzo lived with his six brothers and sisters above the railway yards. The discovery of public libraries and the world of literature led Puzo in the direction of writing. During World War II Puzo served in the US Air Force stationed in East Asia and Germany. After the war he stayed in Germany as a civilian public relations man for the Air Force. Puzo then studied at the New School for Social Research, New York, and at Columbia University. During this period he took classes in literature and creative writing. In 1946 he married Erika Broske; they had five children. His first published story, 'The Last Christmans', appeared in American Vanguard in 1950.

Puzo worked for 20 years as an administrative assistant in government offices in New York and overseas. In 1946 he married Erika Lina Broske; they had three sons and two daughters. Puzo's his first book, Dark arena, appeared in 1955, when he was 35. The novel dealt with the relationship between Walter Mosca, a tough and embittered ex-GI, and Hella, a German native, his mistress. She dies of an infection, denied the drugs that would have saved her, and Mosca avenges her.

From 1963 Puzo worked as a free lance journalist and writer. He wrote for men's magazines, among them Stag and Male, and published book reviews, stories, and articles in such journals as Redbook, Holiday, Book World, and the New York Times. In 1965 Fortunate Pilgrim appeared, which followed one family of Italian immigrants from the late 1920s through World War II. The plot centered round an Italian peasant woman, a twice-widowed matriarch Lucia, her perception of the 'American dream', and juxtaposed her honest and determined progress with that of a corrupt climber. Neither of Puzo's first two books gained financial success, though both received good reviews. Both were translated among others into Finnish. Puzo's fourth work, The Runaway Summer of David Shaw (1966), was a children's book. After an expensive medical emergency - a gallbladder attack - Puzo decided to write a book that would also be a commercial success. While working in pulp journalism, he had heard Mafia anecdotes and he started to collect material on the East Coast branches of the Cosa Nostra.

The themes of love, crime, family bondage, and Old World values were further developed in Puzo's novel Godfather (1969), his international breakthrough story about the roots of mafia, corruption, violence, and honour. The central character, Don Corleone, is a sentimental bandit, individualist and ruthless scourge inside a tightly structured crime syndicate. His values are at once 'domestic' and anti-social. Puzo describes Don Corleone's struggle among the underworld bosses for power, and how family values are transferred from one generation to the next and how they change under social pressure. Puzo also referred to real-life events and persons. One of the characters had similarities with the famous singer Frank Sinatra, who verbally attacked the author in a restaurant in 1972. With the book Puzo achieved his financial goals, but he also confessed that he wrote below his gifts.

Puzo's international bestseller was also adapted for the screen. Director Francis Ford Coppola did not like the book at first, but his films, Godfather and Godfather Part II, received several Oscars, including best picture and best script (written by Puzo and Coppola). The production was beset with difficulties. Before shooting began, the Italian-American Civil Rights League held a rally in Madison Square Garden and raised $600 000 towards attempts to stop the film. Finally Coppola agreed to eliminate the words 'Mafia' and 'Cosa Nostra' from the screenplay. Coppola's unlinear narrative technique and flashbacks in Godfather II puzzled critics. He cut back and forth between the late fifties and the late 1890s and early 1900s. Robert De Niro ais the young Vito is an immigrant in New York, and Michael (Al Pacino), his son, gets mixed up with the downfall of Batista's Cuba. Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times (December 13, 1974): "It's a Frankenstein's monster stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts but it has no mind of its own... Everything of any interest was thoroughly covered in the original film, but like many people who have nothing to say, Part II won't shut up... Looking very expensive but spiritually desperate, Part II has the air of a very long, very elaborate revue sketch."

The third part (1990), which was not based on the original book, was written by the director Coppola and Puzo, starring Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Andy Garcia, and Eli Wallach. Coppola's well-made film was a self-conscious mafia opera but did not find the critical or commercial success of the earlier pictures. The story was set in 1979, Pacino is now an aged don who wants to leave the world of crime behind. Compared to the films, Puzo's books were less romanticized and they had more graphic sex and violence. Coppola's attitude toward the corruption is more cutting and he draws parallels to contemporary politics: the Watergate scandal was simultaneously revealing the reach of criminality into the highest levels of government. In the film, the civil servants and Cardinals of Vatican are potrayed as tough negotiators as the mobsters.

Fools Die, 1978, was set in Las Vegas, Hollywood, Tokyo, and New York during the 1950s and 1960s. The protagonist in the story was a dishonest fiction writer who considered himself a modern-day magician. Eventually Merlyn writes a best-'selling novel that becomes a hugely profitable movie. May readers found the work aimless and dull. The Sicilian (1984) was based on the life of Salvatore Giuliano, the so-called Robin Hood of Sicily.

Michael Crichton is a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER.

Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He has taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. Crichton's 2004 bestseller, State of Fear, acknowledged the world was growing warmer, but challenged extreme anthropogenic warming scenarios. He predicted future warming at 0.8 degrees C. (His conclusions have been widely misstated.)

Crichton's interest in computer modeling goes back forty years. His multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090 computer at Harvard, was published in the Papers of the Peabody Museum in 1966. His technical publications include a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma, in Metabolism, and an essay on medical obfuscation in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Crichton's first bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, was published while he was still a medical student. He later worked full time on film and writing. Now one of the most popular writers in the world, his books have been translated into thirty-six languages, and thirteen have been made into films.

He's had a lifelong interest in computers. His feature film Westworld was the first to employ computer-generated special effects back in 1973. Crichton's pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him a Technical Achievement Academy Award in 1995.

Crichton has won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writer's Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini. He has a daughter, Taylor, and lives in Los Angeles. Crichton remarried in 2005.

Awards: Recipient of Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award, 1968 ("A Case of Need", written under pseudonym Jeffery Hudson); and 1980 ("The Great Train Robbery"). Association of American Medical Writers Award, 1970 ("Five Patients"); Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Technical Achievement Award, 1995 ("for pioneering computerized motion picture budgeting and scheduling"); George Foster Peabody Award (for "ER"); Writer's Guild of America Award, Best Long Form Television Script of 1995 (for "ER") Emmy, Best Dramatic Series, 1996 (for "ER"). Ankylosaur named Crichtonsaurus bohlini, 2002.

Associations: Member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Author's Guild, Writers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, P.E.N. America Center, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Phi Beta Kappa. Board of Directors, International Design Conference at Aspen, 1985-91; Board of Trustees, Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, La Jolla, 1986-91. Board of Overseers, Harvard University, 1990-96. Board of Directors, Drug Strategies, 1994-, Author's Guild Council, 1995-, Board of Directors, Gorilla Foundation, 2002-, Board of Trustees, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

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David Baldacci was born in Virginia, in 1960, where he currently resides. He received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Virginia Commonwealth University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Mr. Baldacci practiced law for nine years in Washington, D.C., as both a trial and corporate attorney.

David Baldacci has published fifteen novels: Absolute Power, Total Control, The Winner, The Simple Truth, Saving Faith, Wish You Well, Last Man Standing, The Christmas Train, Split Second, Hour Game, The Camel Club, The Collectors, Simple Genius, and in his young adult series, Freddy and the French Fries: Fries Alive! and Freddy and the French Fries: The Advendures of Silas Finklebean. He has also published a novella for the Dutch entitled Office Hours, written for Holland's Year 2000 "Month of the Thriller." Baldacci authored a short story, "The Mighty Johns," as part of a mystery anthology published in 2002. His works have been in numerous worldwide magazines, newspapers, journals, and publications. Baldacci has authored seven original screenplays. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold in more than 80 countries. All of his books have been national and international bestsellers. Over 50 million copies of Mr. Baldacci's books are in print worldwide.

Castle Rock entertainment made Absolute Power (Warner Books, 1996) into a major motion picture starring Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman. The novel Absolute Power won Britain's W. H. Smith's Thumping Good Read award for fiction in 1997, and was nominated for a literary award in Italy. Absolute Power was selected for People Magazine's "Page Turner of the Week." Absolute Power won the 1996 Gold Medal Award for Best Mystery/Thriller from the Southern Writers Guild.

The paperback version of Total Control (Warner Books, 1996) was a best-selling favorite of the traveling public for over a year. Total Control won the 1997 Gold Medal Award for Best Mystery/Thriller from the Southern Writers Guild.

The Winner's (Warner Books, 1997) sales topped those of Baldacci's first two novels, no doubt aided by revealing in the novel how to fix the lottery and win a hundred million dollars! The Winner received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, its highest rating.

The Simple Truth (Warner Books, 1998) was the first of Baldacci's novels in which part of the plot was based upon an actual event. President Clinton selected The Simple Truth as his favorite novel of 1999.

Saving Faith (Warner Books, 1999) is a novel about how Washington really works, and it reached number one on both the New York Times Bestseller List and the Publisher's Weekly national bestseller list. Saving Faith was selected for People Magazine's "Page Turner of the Week."

Wish You Well (Warner Books, 2000) is strongly linked to Baldacci's maternal family history. In researching for this book, he spent countless hours talking with his mother, who spent her first seventeen years on the "high rock" and learning its lifelong lessons. Wish You Well received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly and was selected as the inaugural book for All America Reads, a national reading program.

Last Man Standing (Warner Books, 2001) is an explosive psychological thriller about Web London, a member of the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team, who is desperate to find answers for secret terrors and relief from unbearable guilt. Last Man Standing reached number one on the New York Times Bestseller List.

The Christmas Train (Warner Books, 2002) is filled with memorable characters who have packed their bags for a holiday adventure and shows how we do get second chances to fulfill our deepest hopes and dreams during the season of miracles. The Christmas Train has quickly become a holiday classic.

Split Second (Warner Books, 2003) is a compelling, fast-paced political thriller that gives readers an inside look at the work of the Secret Service as it strives to protect America's leaders. As their worlds close in upon them, former agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell team up to seek answer to events that, at first glance, seem to be unrelated disasters. Split Second became a New York Times bestseller on its first day of publication.

Hour Game (Warner Books, 2004) teams Sean King and Michelle Maxwell from Split Second in a race to prove a man’s innocence in a domestic burglary. They quickly find themselves caught in a chain of murders that once again rocks the quiet hills of Wrightsburg, Virginia. At every turn, King and Maxwell find themselves trying to put the pieces together as the killer is plays the murderous "hour game."

In The Camel Club (Warner Books, 2005), Baldacci goes beyond the traditional boundaries of fiction, painting a frighteningly vivid portrait of a world that could be our own very soon, and the few people who have a chance to stop the last war the world may ever fight.

In The Collectors (Warner Books, 2006), Baldacci weaves a brilliant, white-knuckle tale of suspense in which every collectors is searching for one missing prize... the one to die for.

Simple Genius (Warner Books, 2007) brings back the dynamic team of Sean King and Michelle Maxwell from Split Second and Hour Game. While investigating a dead body found in Babbage Town -- a think-tank and high tech research facility just across the York River from the CIA Training Facility in Camp Peary, Virginia -- King & Maxwell find themselves thrown into the midst of a worldwide race to control information, and at any cost -- even murder.

Freddy and the French Fries: Fries Alive! (Little, Brown & Company, 2005) and Freddy and the French Fries: The Adventures of Silas Finklebean (Little, Brown & Company, 2006) are titles in Baldacci's series for young readers. Find out more about Freddy at his Web site, FreddyandtheFrenchFries.com.

David Baldacci's books have been publicly discussed and/or read by everyone from Howard Stern and Don Imus to Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, from George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton to Charlie Rose and Larry King.

Baldacci has made many television and radio appearances and has been featured in numerous national and international publications.

David Baldacci serves as a national ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and participates in numerous charities, including the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, the American Cancer Society, and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He sits on the boards of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Virginia Commonwealth University. Baldacci also holds various honorary chairs.

John Ringo had visited 23 countries and attended 14 schools by the time he graduated high school. This left him with a wonderful appreciation of the oneness of humanity and a permanent aversion to foreign food. He chose to study marine biology and really liked it. Unfortunately the pay was for beans. So he turned to quality control database management, where the pay was much better. His highest hopes were to someday upgrade to SQL Server, at which point, he thought, his life would be complete. But then Fate took a hand: John has become a professional science fiction writer, and is in the early stages of becoming fabulously wealthy, which his publisher has assured him is the common lot of science fiction writers who write for Baen Books. In addition to his own enthusiastically received military SF series-A Hymn Before Battle, Gust Front, When the Devil Dances, and now Hell's Faire-he is collaborating with New York Times best-selling author David Weber on a new SF adventure series: March Upcountry, March to the Sea, and March to the Stars, with more to come.

With his bachelor years spent in the airborne, cave diving, rock-climbing, rappelling, hunting, spear-fishing, and sailing, the author is now happy to let other people risk their necks. He prefers to write science fiction (both alone and in collaboration with David Weber) raise Arabian horses, dandle his kids and watch the grass grow. Someday he may even cut it. But not today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe he'll just let the horses eat it.

Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge in March 1952, educated at Brentwood School, Essex and St John's College, Cambridge where, in 1974 he gained a BA (and later an MA) in English literature.

He was creator of all the various manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxywhich started life as a BBC Radio 4 series. Since its first airing in March 1978 it has been transformed into a series of best-selling novels, a TV series, a record album, a computer game and several stage adaptations.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's phenomenal success sent the book straight to Number One in the UK Bestseller List and in 1984 Douglas Adams became the youngest author to be awarded a Golden Pan. He won a further two (a rare feat), and was nominated - though not selected - for the first Best of Young British Novelists awards.

He followed this success with The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980); Life, The Universe and Everything (1982); So Long and Thanks for all the Fish (1984); and Mostly Harmless (1992). The first two books in the Hitchhiker series were adapted into a 6 part television series, which was an immediate success when first aired in 1982. Other publications include Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul (1988). In 1984 Douglas teamed up with John Lloyd and wrote The Meaning of Liff and after a huge success The Deeper Meaning of Liff followed this in 1990). One of Douglas’s all-time personal favourites was written in 1990 when he teamed up with zoologist Mark Carwardine and wrote Last Chance to See – an account of a world-wide search for rare and endangered species of animals.

He sold over 15 million books in the UK, the US and Australia and was also a best seller in German, Swedish and many other languages.

Douglas was a founding director of h2g2, formerly The Digital Village, a digital media and Internet company with which he created the 1998 CD-ROM Starship Titanic, a Codie Award-winning (1999) and BAFTA-nominated (1998) adventure game.

Douglas died unexpectedly in May 2001 of a sudden heart attack. He was 49. He had been living in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and daughter, and at the time of his death he was working on the screenplay for a feature film version of Hitchhiker.

Greatest writer in modern Indian literature, Bengali poet, novelist, educator, and an early advocate of Independence for India. Tagaore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Two years later he was awarded the knighthood, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators. Tagore's influence over Gandhi and the founders of modern India was enormous, but his reputation in the West as a mystic has perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic of colonialism.

"When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose touch of the one in the play of the many." (from Gitanjali)

Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta into a wealthy and prominent family. His father was Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, a religious reformer and scholar. His mother, Sarada Devi, died when Tagore was very young - he realized that she will never come back was when her body was carried through a gate to a place where it was burned. Tagore's grandfather had established a huge financial empire for himself. He helped a number of public projects, such as Calcutta Medical College.

The Tagores tried to combine traditional Indian culture with Western ideas; all the children contributed significantly to Bengali literature and culture. However, in My Reminiscences Tagore mentions that it was not until the age of ten when he started to use socks and shoes. And servants beat the children regularly. Tagore, the youngest, started to compose poems at the age of eight. Tagore's first book, a collection of poems, appeared when he was 17; it was published by Tagore's friend who wanted to surprise him.

Tagore received his early education first from tutors and then at a variety of schools. Among them were Bengal Academy where he studied history and culture. At University College, London, he studied law but left after a year - he did not like the weather. Once he gave a beggar a cold coin - it was more than the beggar had expected and he returned it. In England Tagore started to compose the poem 'Bhagna Hridaj' (a broken heart).

In 1883 Tagore married Mrinalini Devi Raichaudhuri, with whom he had two sons and three daughters. In 1890 Tagore moved to East Bengal (now Bangladesh), where he collected local legends and folklore. Between 1893 and 1900 he wrote seven volumes of poetry, including SONAR TARI (The Golden Boat), 1894 and KHANIKA, 1900. This was highly productive period in Tagore's life, and earned him the rather misleading epitaph 'The Bengali Shelley.' More important was that Tagore wrote in the common language of the people. This also was something that was hard to accept among his critics and scholars.

Tagore was the first Indian to bring an element of psychological realism to his novels. Among his early major prose works are CHOCHER BALI (1903, Eyesore) and NASHTANIR (1901, The Broken Nest), published first serially. Between 1891 and 1895 he published forty-four short stories in Bengali periodical, most of them in the monthly journal Sadhana.

Especially Tagore's short stories influenced deeply Indian Literature. 'Punishment', a much anthologized work, was set in a rural village. It describes the oppression of women through the tragedy of the low-caste Rui family. Chandara is a proud, beautiful woman, "buxom, well-rounded, compact and sturdy," her husband, Chidam, is a farm-laborer, who works in the fields with his brother Dukhiram. One day when they return home after whole day of toil and humiliation, Dukhiram kills in anger his sloppy and slovenly wife because his food was not ready. To help his brother, Chidam's tells to police that his wife struck her sister-in-law with the farm-knife. Chandara takes the blame on to herself. 'In her thoughts, Chandara was saying to her husband, "I shall give my youth to the gallows instead of you. My final ties in this life will be with them."' Afterwards both Chidam and Dukhiram try to confess that they were quilty but Chandara is convicted. Just before the hanging, the doctor says that her husband wants to see her. "To hell with him," says Chandara.

In 1901 Tagore founded a school outside Calcutta, Visva-Bharati, which was dedicated to emerging Western and Indian philosophy and education. It become a university in 1921. He produced poems, novels, stories, a history of India, textbooks, and treatises on pedagogy. Tagore's wife died in 1902, next year one of his daughters died, and in 1907 Tagore lost his younger son.

Tagore's reputation as a writer was established in the United States and in England after the publication of GITANJALI: SONG OFFERINGS, about divine and human love. The poems were translated into English by the author himself. In the introduction from 1912 William Butler Yates wrote: "These lyrics - which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention - display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long." Tagore's poems were also praised by Ezra Pound, and drew the attention of the Nobel Prize committee. "There is in him the stillness of nature. The poems do not seem to have been produced by storm or by ignition, but seem to show the normal habit of his mind. He is at one with nature, and finds no contradictions. And this is in sharp contrast with the Western mode, where man must be shown attempting to master nature if we are to have "great drama." (Ezra Pound in Fortnightly Review, 1 March 1913) However, Tagore also experimented with poetic forms and these works have lost much in translations into other languages.

Much of Tagore's ideology come from the teaching of the Upahishads and from his own beliefs that God can be found through personal purity and service to others. He stressed the need for new world order based on transnational values and ideas, the "unity consciousness." "The soil, in return for her service, keeps the tree tied to her; the sky asks nothing and leaves it free." Politically active in India, Tagore was a supporter of Gandhi, but warned of the dangers of nationalistic thought. Unable to gain ideological support to his views, he retired into relative solitude. Between the years 1916 and 1934 he travelled widely. From his journey to Japan in 1916 he produced articles and books. In 1927 he toured in Southeast Asia. Letters from Java, which first was serialized in Vichitra, was issued as a book, JATRI, in 1929. His Majesty, Riza Shah Pahlavi, invited Tagore to Iran in 1932. On his journeys and lecture tours Tagore attempted to spread the ideal of uniting East and West. While in Japan he wrote: "The Japanese do not waste their energy in useless screaming and quarreling, and because there is no waste of energy it is not found wanting when required. This calmness and fortitude of body and mind is part of their national self-realization."

Tagore wrote his most important works in Bengali, but he often translated his poems into English. At the age of 70 Tagore took up painting. He was also a composer, settings hundreds of poems to music. Many of his poems are actually songs, and inseparable from their music. Tagore's 'Our Golden Bengal' became the national anthem of Bangladesh. Only hours before he died on August 7, in 1941, Tagore dictated his last poem. His written production, still not completely collected, fills nearly 30 substantial volumes. Tagore remained a well-known and popular author in the West until the end of the 1920s, but nowadays he is not so much read.

There is a network of elite herbalists, holistic healers, and renegade medical doctors throughout the world, performing miracles on a daily basis. Thousands of people throughout the world have come to these “miracle doctors� terminally ill, and thousands have left healthy. Now, the secrets of these Miracle Doctors is revealed in this step-by-step guide to optimum health and relief from catastrophic illness.

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Lessons from the Miracle Doctors is quite simply the best book ever written on complementary health. It clearly, concisely, and eloquently lays out a simple step-by-step program that anyone can use to prevent and, yes, even reverse most of the major diseases we face today. I know this is true because I have personally seen many of the people who have experienced these very same results.
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Facts and figures about how the way you breathe can help or hinder your health, well being, peak performance, longevity and spiritual experience.

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The world of meta data began with simple listings that came from early compilers. From that humble origin came directories, then data dictionaries, then repositories and sophisticated end-user tools. The Internet came along and opened up the doors of computing into venues never before imagined, and meta data grew once again.

The time has come for consumers to step forward and specify a standard for meta data semantics and exchange. This book is an important step toward that goal. It will be a lodestone for future products and collaborative efforts across the corporate information factory.

The Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) is the new OMG standard that makes the sharing of data seamless. The CWM standard development team provides developers with a complete overview of what CWM is and how it works.

After acquainting readers with the CWM architecture and how each CWM component fits into existing database and data warehouse architectures, the authors provide expert guidance on how to plan for, implement, and deploy CWM technologies. Companion Web site features updates on CWM technologies, descriptions of tools, and links to vendor sites.

TABLE OF CONTENT:
Chapter 1 - Introduction to the Common Warehouse Metamodel
Chapter 2 - The Value Proposition for CWM
Chapter 3 - Foundation Technologies
Chapter 4 - An Architectural Overview of CWM
Chapter 5 - Using CWM
Chapter 6 - Developing Meta Data Solutions Using CWM
Chapter 7 - Implementing CWM
Chapter 8 - Conclusions

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http://rapidshare.com/files/56791045/comwarmet.rar

password:
ganelon

It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented
design, and it’s clear that there is a growing need for designers and
artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between
their ideas and the capability of their purchased software.

This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the
context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text
for Processing (www.processing.org), an open-source programming language
that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects,
researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and
interactivity. The ideas in Processing have been tested in classrooms,
workshops, and arts institutions, including UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, New
York University, and Harvard University. Tutorial units make up the bulk
of the book and introduce the syntax and concepts of software (including
variables, functions, and object-oriented programming), cover such
topics as photography and drawing in relation to software, and feature
many short, prototypical example programs with related images and
explanations. More advanced professional projects from such domains as
animation, performance, and typography are discussed in interviews with
their creators. “Extensions� present concise introductions to further
areas of investigation, including computer vision, sound, and
electronics. Appendixes, references to other material, and a glossary
contain additional technical details. Processing can be used by reading
each unit in order, or by following each category from the beginning of
the book to the end. The Processing software and all of the code
presented can be downloaded and run for future exploration. With essays
by: Alexander R. Galloway, Golan Levin, R. Luke DuBois, Simon Greenwold,
Francis Li, and Hernando Barragán and interviews with Jared Tarbell,
Martin Wattenberg, James Paterson, Erik van Blockland, Ed Burton, Josh
On, Jürg Lehni, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, Mathew Cullen and Grady
Hall, Bob Sabiston, Jennifer Steinkamp, Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt,
Sue Costabile, Chris Csikszentmihályi, Golan Levin and Zachary
Lieberman, and Mark Hansen.

Download link
http://depositfiles.com/files/1928129
http://rapidshare.com/files/59352267/0262182629.zip

- Use advanced regular expressions, including global matches,
lookarounds, readable regexes, and regex debugging
- Avoid common programing problems with secure programming techniques
- Profile and benchmark Perl to find out where to focus your
improvements
- Wrangle Perl code to make it more presentable and readable
- See how Perl keeps track of package variables and how you can use
that for some powerful tricks
- Define subroutines on the fly and turn the tables on normal
procedural programming.
- Modify and jury rig modules to fix code without editing the original
source
- Let your users configure your programs without touching the code
- Learn how you can detect errors Perl doesn’t report, and how to tell
users about them
- Let your Perl program talk back to you by using Log4perl
- Store data for later use in another program, a later run of the same
program, or to send them over a network
- Write programs as modules to get the benefit of Perl’s distribution
and testing tools Appendices include “brian’s Guide to Solving Any Perl
Problem� to improve your troubleshooting skills, as well as suggested
reading to continue your Perl education. Mastering Perl starts you on
your path to becoming the person with the answers, and, failing that,
the person who knows how to find the answers or discover the problem.

[rapidshare.com]
or
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H3XMXC3W
or
http://w14.easy-share.com/6276371.html

Functional programming (FP) is the future of .NET programming, and F# is
much more than just an FP language. Every professional .NET programmer
needs to learn about FP, and there’s no better way to do it than by

learning F#–and no easier way to learn F# than from Foundations of F#.
If you’re already familiar with FP, you’ll find F# the language you’ve
always dreamed of. And all .NET programmers will find F# an exciting
real-world alternative to C# and Visual Basic. This book is likely to
have many imitators, but few true competitors. Written by F# evangelist
Rob Pickering, and tech reviewed by F#’s main designer, Don Syme, this
is an elegant, comprehensive introduction to all aspects of the language
and an incisive guide to using F# for real-world professional
development. F# is the future of programming (not just on .NET), and the
future is now.
http://rapidshare.com/files/59633876/Apress.Foundations.of.F.Sharp.May.2007.rar
or
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TBIABGCF
or
http://w14.easy-share.com/6278511.html

Whether you’re a professional photographer or the family shutterbug, you can’t afford to miss the third edition of the now classic Photoshop Restoration & Retouching.

Katrin Eismann and co-author Wayne Palmer have reviewed, updated, and revised every single technique to address the most important features in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Clear step-by-step instructions using professional examples highlight the tools and techniques photographers, designers, restoration studios, and beauty retouchers use to restore valuable antique images, retouch portraits, and enhance glamour photography. With new example images illustrating the tutorials, Photoshop Restoration & Retouching,
Third Edition will show you how to transform faded, damaged photographs into beautiful images that are as clear and crisp
as the day they were taken�maybe even better�and how to turn casual snapshots and studio portraits into the most flattering
images possible. Full-color, step-by-step examples show you how to:
• Correct extreme exposure errors and improve color, contrast, and tone
• Rescue heirloom originals suffering from mold damage, cracks, and torn edges�even replace missing image
information
• Remove dust and scratches quickly and easily
• Transform your photos into beautiful, original works of art by converting them to black-and-white or tinted images
• Use a variety of sharpening techniques and tonalcorrection tools to add life and sparkle to digital photos
• Enhance portraits by removing blemishes, reducing wrinkles, and enhancing eyes, lips, and hair, while maintaining the subject’s essential character
• Apply the secrets that the top retouchers in the glamour and beauty industry use to perfect skin, make-up, and hair

Download
Code:

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his highly illustrated book is a practical design guide to the structural use of aluminum. The chapters include this history of aluminum, range of applications, alloys and their properties. The book also deals with structural design, and is an invaluable resource for designers, with numerous diagrams, charts and examples.

Proper release contains zipped *.rar and *.nfo files. Some people say that archiving the archives is dumb and additional files are useless. Now they have the choice. Anyway I recommend to download the proper releases.

Download
http://rapidshare.com/files/27507498/CRC.Press.Aluminium.Design.and.Construction.pdf

And
Title: Corrosion of Aluminium
Author: Christian Vargel
Publisher: Elsevier Science
Publication Date: 2004-12-16
Number Of Pages: 700

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What is the universe made of? Look around: Everything we see with our eyes and with our most powerful instruments�all the stars, planets, galaxies, dust, and gas�everything that we think of as atom-based matter is only 5 percent of what we now know exists. The rest is what Dr. Carroll calls the “dark sector,� consisting of:

Dark matter: First proposed in the 1930s, the idea that there is missing mass influencing the behavior of galaxies began to look more and more likely from the 1970s on. We know that it is matter because we can detect its gravitational influence on visible matter. But we can’t see it. An inventory of the distribution of dark matter throughout space shows that it constitutes 25 percent of the energy density of the universe.
Dark energy: The greatest discoveries are those that are completely unexpected. That was the case in the late 1990s, when two teams of astronomers competing to measure the rate at which the expansion of the universe is slowing down (as virtually everyone thought it must be) discovered that it is speeding up instead. A previously unknown, all-pervasive dark energy must be at work, representing 70 percent of the energy density of the universe.

Together dark matter and dark energy account for all but a tiny fraction of everything there is; the ordinary matter that’s left over is like the seasoning on the main dish. The story of how we arrived at this startling cosmic recipe is an absorbing scientific drama, which takes you through the breakthrough discoveries in astronomy and physics since the turn of the 20th century.

Concept by concept, Dr. Carroll gives you the tools to appreciate this subject in depth. He explains why scientists believe we live in a smooth, expanding universe that originated in a hot, dense state called the Big Bang. He describes the features of the infant universe that led to the large-scale structure we observe today. He takes you through the standard model of particle physics and shows how it provides the framework for understanding the interaction of all matter and radiation. And, he helps you understand why dark matter and dark energy are logical consequences of a wide range of scientific theories and observations and how together they complete a grand picture of the universe that has emerged over the last century.

Smoking Guns

Several significant clues disclose the existence of dark matter and dark energy. In the case of dark matter, we have the evidence of:

Galaxy dynamics: The motions of stars in galaxies and galaxies within clusters indicate that there is far more matter than is implied by visible stars and gas.
Gravitational lensing: The bending of light in a gravitational field, called gravitational lensing, shows the existence of gravitational fields�hence, matter�where there is essentially no ordinary matter.
Super-hot gas: Hot x-ray-emitting gas that pervades clusters of galaxies provides a measure of the total gravitational field of the system, revealing that there is more than ordinary matter present.
Echoes of the Big Bang: Variations in the leftover radiation from the Big Bang demonstrate that there must be dark matter pulling the ordinary matter we see.

Dark matter is as plain as day compared to dark energy, which reveals itself subtly but unmistakably through:

Exploding stars: Type Ia supernovae provide a standard candle to measure the distances to faraway galaxies. By combining this information with redshift, which measures how fast a galaxy is receding, astronomers conclude that something is causing galaxies to recede at a faster and faster velocity.
Geometry of space: Observations that space is very close to “flat,� with neither positive nor negative curvature, imply a total energy density for the universe that is stunningly consistent with the dark-energy hypothesis.

What Are They?

For all their mystery, dark matter and dark energy fit like puzzle pieces into the existing framework of fundamental physics. They also have intriguing connections to the more speculative realms of the discipline, such as cosmic inflation and string theory. Inflation was designed to explain the early universe in a way that could clarify otherwise perplexing features about the geometry and temperature of the universe, but insights into dark energy provided a great boost to the scenario of an inflationary universe. And although it is even more speculative than inflation, string theory suggests ideas for explaining dark matter in terms of supersymmetric particles and quantum gravity, as well as a provocative scenario for explaining dark energy in terms of extra dimensions and other universes.

But the overriding question remains: What are dark matter and dark energy? We don’t yet know, but physicists have come up with an array of creative ideas and ways to test them. Dr. Carroll covers the most promising proposals and looks ahead to experiments that will dramatically improve our understanding of the dark sector.

For now, we can only be humbled by this latest demonstration of our curious place in the grand scheme of things. “Not only are we not, like Aristotle would have it, sitting at the center of the cosmos,� muses Dr. Carroll, “we are not even made of the same stuff as the cosmos. The kinds of things we’re made of are only 5 percent of the energy density of the universe. This is a big deal!�

Download
Code:
DVD1
http://www.filefactory.com/file/9067b8/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/320730/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a29fa5/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/254f54/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/e375b5/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/3bec4b/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/4f7732/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/f6d81f/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/7e864c/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a7a732/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/87d5fd/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/9bf13a/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/4d6e19/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/64a064/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/f27b98/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/0ad570/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/592b80/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/8beeaf/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/3349fc/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/5b7a03/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/7138be/

2.1 GB

DVD2
http://www.filefactory.com/file/3c72e5/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/5fd100/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/708baf/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/b37ba2/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/5c9051/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/1b732a/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/ed8823/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/352a88/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/86a43e/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/36fb5f/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/180811/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/dedb5d/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/c83f37/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/77761d/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/2601b6/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/341b18/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/b4d00b/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/27b749/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/4a442b/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/97e28e/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/ce19f0/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/041135/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/618f6c/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/0d7aec/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/5dfd37/

2.5 GB

This is just a dvdrip. There are all tutorials on this 7cds but there is nothing else except movie files. This is one of the best video tutorials ever for learning photoshop cs2. All tuts are in english. Please enjoy and learn photoshop

CD1:
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/38489799/2Tapcs_d1_JB.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38502117/2Tapcs_d1_JB.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38516639/2Tapcs_d1_JB.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38530143/2Tapcs_d1_JB.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38550251/2Tapcs_d1_JB.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38562625/2Tapcs_d1_JB.part6.rar

CD2:
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/38623227/2Tapcs_d2_JB.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38631012/2Tapcs_d2_JB.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38654371/2Tapcs_d2_JB.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38662638/2Tapcs_d2_JB.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38671454/2Tapcs_d2_JB.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38804272/2Tapcs_d2_JB.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38808363/2Tapcs_d2_JB.part7.rar

CD3:
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/37331222/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD3_by_JB.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37343123/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD3_by_JB.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37356769/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD3_by_JB.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37370085/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD3_by_JB.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37396350/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD3_by_JB.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37409471/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD3_by_JB.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37418234/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD3_by_JB.part7.rar

CD4:
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/37666034/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD4_by_JB.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37674975/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD4_by_JB.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37683112/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD4_by_JB.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37700824/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD4_by_JB.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37736772/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD4_by_JB.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37765055/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD4_by_JB.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/37772928/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD4_by_JB.part7.rar

CD5:
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/38077959/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD5_by_JB.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38089520/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD5_by_JB.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38100151/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD5_by_JB.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38110653/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD5_by_JB.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38122134/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD5_by_JB.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38133633/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD5_by_JB.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38139111/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD5_by_JB.part7.rar

CD6:
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/38151223/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD6_by_JB.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38163697/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD6_by_JB.part2.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/38201671/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD6_by_JB.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38216933/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD6_by_JB.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38223313/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD6_by_JB.part7.rar

CD7:
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/38434218/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD7_by_JB.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38441217/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD7_by_JB.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38447798/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD7_by_JB.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38454802/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD7_by_JB.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38463222/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD7_by_JB.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38473610/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD7_by_JB.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/38478300/Total_Training_Adobe_Photoshop_CS_CD7_by_JB.part7.rar

There is no PASS for this archives!!!

Shooting Digital is a unique, full-color guide to the art and craft of taking great pictures with your digital camera. With his exceptionally personable style, acclaimed author and professional photographer Mikkel Aaland shows beginning and intermediate photographers how to improve their shots, while helping more experienced photographers make the transition from traditional cameras to digital.

Throughout, he gives techniques for taking great pictures with digital cameras, using step-by-step examples and case studies contributed by a team of professional photographers. These are complemented by stunning images that will inspire readers to take their digital photos to the next level.

Topics covered include: Bridging the gap between film and digital; choosing the right digital camera; taking great portraits; photographing groups and social events; secrets of good travel photography; getting great action shots; shooting architecture and interiors; making beautiful landscapes; shooting merchandise; panoramics and VR; organizing and sharing digital photos; and more. Sidebars show how to get the most out of digital cameras and accessories and how to use software like Adobe Photoshop Elements to improve photos.

Filled with valuable insights and instruction, this book’s outstanding written content is matched by its elegant design, high-quality coated paper, and hundreds of full-color images.

Code:

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Linux is a solid operating system. It is easy to use and install, has very powerful capabilities, runs fast on almost any hardware, and rarely crashes. It has few bugs and its widespread support from a cast of thousands ensures that any remaining bugs get fixed as soon as they are discovered.

It is highly versatile and can be made as secure as any UNIX system.Unfortunately, UNIX and Linux machines are broken into every day, not because they are inherently insecure, but because the steps required to expose a system to the real world safely-the modern Internet-are not always so obvious. The single goal of this book is to teach any Linux or UNIX system administrator how to secure his systems, keep them secure, and feel confident that all necessary steps have been taken.1.1

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http://w14.easy-share.com/6432031.html
or
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IFOWZ1IR

He says:
Oh sure, they say they’re busy. They say that they didn’t have even a moment in their insanely busy day to pick up the phone. It was just that crazy. All lies. With the advent of cell phones and speed dialing, it is almost impossible not to call you. Sometimes I call people from my pants pocket when I don’t even mean to. If I were into you, you would be the bright spot in my horribly busy day. Which would be a day that I would never be too busy to call you.

She says:
There is something great about knowing that my only job is to be as happy as I can be about my life, and feel as good as I can about myself, and to lead as full and eventful a life as I can, so that it doesn’t ever feel like I’m just waiting around for some guy to ask me out. And most importantly, it’s good for us all to remember that we don’t need to scheme and plot, or beg anyone to ask us out. We’re fantastic.
For ages women have come together over coffee, cocktails, or late-night phone chats to analyze the puzzling behavior of men.
He’s Just Not That Into You is provocative, hilarious, and, above all, intoxicatingly liberating. It deserves a place on every woman’s night table. It knows you’re a beautiful, smart, funny woman who deserves better. The next time you feel the need to start “figuring him out,� consider the glorious thought that maybe He’s just not that into you. And then set yourself loose to go find the one who is.

Download (2.34 Mb):
Code:
http://rapidshare.com/files/59941851/He.is.Just.Not.That.Into.You.rar
or
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LM2P1HEH
or
http://w14.easy-share.com/6432111.html

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