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Featured Authors We are privileged to offer works by some of the finest writers in the industry. Please enjoy the following bios of some of our most popular authors. Also take a look at our readers.

		Peter Ackroyd PETER ACKROYD is the author of London: The Biography, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, and Shakespeare: The Biography; acclaimed biographies of T.S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake, and Sir Thomas More; several successful novels; and the series Acrkoyd’s Brief Lives. He has won the Whitbread Book Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the South Bank Award for Literature. He lives in London.
		Christopher Paolini Christopher Paolini was born on November 17, 1983 in Southern California. He has lived most of his life in Paradise Valley, Montana with his parents and younger sister, Angela. The tall, jagged Beartooth Mountains rise on one side of Paradise Valley. Snowcapped most of the year, they inspired the fantastic scenery in Eragon. Christopher was homeschooled by his parents. As a child, he often wrote short stories and poems, made frequent trips to the library, and read widely. Some of his favorite books were Bruce Coville's Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, Frank Herbert's Dune, and Raymond E. Feist's Magician, as well as books by Anne McCaffrey, Jane Yolen, Brian Jacques, E.R. Eddison, David Eddings, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The idea of Eragon began as the daydreams of a teen. Christopher's love for the magic of stories led him to craft a novel that he would enjoy reading. The project began as a hobby, a personal challenge; he never intended it to be published. All the characters in Eragon are from Christopher's imagination except Angela the herbalist, who is loosely based on his sister. Christopher was fifteen when he wrote the first draft of Eragon. He took a second year to revise the book and then gave it to his parents to read. The family decided to self-publish the book and spent a third year preparing the manuscript for publication: copyediting, proofreading, designing a cover, typesetting the manuscript, and creating marketing materials. During this time Christopher drew the map for Eragon, as well as the dragon eye for the book cover (that now appears inside the Knopf hardcover edition). The manuscript was sent to press and the first books arrived in November 2001. The Paolini family spent the next year promoting the book at libraries, bookstores, and schools in 2002 and early 2003. In summer 2002, author Carl Hiaasen, whose stepson read a copy of the self-published book while on vacation in Montana, brought Eragon to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, which is part of Random House. Michelle Frey, executive editor at Knopf Books for Young Readers, contacted Christopher and his family to ask if they might be interested in having Knopf publish Eragon. The answer was yes, and after another round of editing, Knopf published Eragon in August 2003. After an extensive United States and United Kingdom book tour for Eragon that lasted into 2004, Christopher returned to writing his second book, Eldest, which continues the adventures of Eragon and the dragon Saphira. Eldest was published in August 2005, and was followed by Christopher's book tour throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, and Italy. In December 2006, Fox 2000 released their movie adaptation of Eragon in theaters around the world. Christopher is currently writing Book Three, which will be published on September 23, 2008. Early in 2007 he realized that the plot and characters demanded more space than could fit in one volume and that a fourth book would be necessary to give each story element the attention it deserved. What began as the Inheritance trilogy became the Inheritance cycle. Book Four will complete the story that Christopher envisioned years ago when he first outlined the adventure. Christopher is grateful to all his readers. He is especially heartened to hear that his books have inspired young people to read and to write stories of their own. Once the Inheritance cycle is finished, Christopher plans to take a long vacation and ponder which of his many story ideas he will write next. Visit these web sites to find out more: Alagaesia.com Shurtugal.com Eragons.com (Spanish)
		Philip Pullman “Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.”—Philip Pullman Philip Pullman is the acclaimed author of the His Dark Materials trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. His other books for children and young adults include Count Karlstein and a trilogy of Victorian thrillers featuring Sally Lockhart. The Golden Compass, the first of Pullman's His Dark Materials triology, won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Fiction Prize. ABOUT THE AUTHOR I started telling stories as soon as I knew what stories were. I was fascinated by them: that something could happen and be connected to another thing, and that someone could put the two things together and show how the first thing caused the second thing, which then caused a third thing. I loved it. I love it still. I grew up at a time when TV wasn’t as important as it is now. In fact, part of my childhood was spent in Australia at a time when that country didn’t even have TV so a lot of my early experiences with stories came from the radio, which is a wonderful medium. I remember listening to gangster serials, and cowboy serials, and best of all: “Faster than a speeding bullet—more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s SUPERMAN!” Superman on the radio was exciting enough, but when I first saw a Superman comic, it changed my life. Soon afterward I discovered Batman, too, whom I loved even more. I had to argue with my parents about them, though, because they weren’t “proper” reading. I suppose what persuaded them to let me carry on reading comics was the fact that I was also reading books just as greedily, and that I was good at spelling; so obviously the comics weren’t harming me too much. My favorite stories for a long time were ghost stories. I used to enjoy frightening myself and my friends with the tales I read, and making up stories about a tree in the woods we used to call the Hanging Tree, creeping past it in the dark and shivering as we looked at the bare, sinister outline against the sky. I still enjoy ghost stories, even though I don’t think I believe in ghosts anymore. I was sure that I was going to write stories myself when I grew up. It’s important to put it like that: not “I am a writer,” but rather “I write stories.” If you put the emphasis on yourself rather than your work, you’re in danger of thinking that you’re the most important thing. But you’re not. The story is what matters, and you’re only the servant, and your job is to get it out on time and in good order. The most valuable thing I’ve learned about writing is to keep going, even when it’s not coming easily. You sometimes hear people talk about something called “writer’s block.” Did you ever hear a plumber talk about plumber’s block? Do doctors get doctor’s block? Of course they don’t. They work even when they don’t want to. There are times when writing is very hard, too, when you can’t think what to put next, and when staring at the empty page is miserable toil. Tough. Your job is to sit there and make things up, so do it. As well as keeping going, there are many other things I’ve learned about this craft, and some of them came to me when I was teaching. What I enjoyed most in that difficult and valuable profession was telling stories, telling folk tales and ghost stories and Greek myths, over and over, until I knew them as well as I knew my own life. And in doing so, I learned some of the laws of a story. Not rules - rules can be changed. “Smoking Permitted Here” can become “No Smoking” overnight, if people decide smoking is a bad thing. But laws such as the law of gravity can’t be changed: Gravity is there whether we approve of it or not. And so are the laws of a story. A story that is unresolved will not satisfy—that’s a law. If a scene does not advance the story, it will get in the way—that’s another law. You must know exactly where your story begins—that’s a third. And so on. One strange thing about stories is that you sometimes know how long they’re going to be, even before you’ve begun thinking about them. With His Dark Materials, the trilogy of which the first part is The Golden Compass, I knew from the very start—even before I had a main character in mind, and long before I knew what might happen to her—that this story would be 1,200 pages long. That was the size of it. I knew, too, that I was going to enter a world I hadn’t known before: a world of fantasy. Previously, all of my books had been realistic. When I began writing it, I discovered a kind of freedom and excitement I’d never quite felt before. And that is one of the joys of writing: You constantly encounter new experiences. I live in Oxford now, and I do my writing in a shed at the bottom of the garden. If the young boy I used to be could have looked ahead in time and seen the man I am today, writing stories in his shed, would he have been pleased? I wonder. Would that child who loved Batman comics and ghost stories approve of the novels I earn my living with now? I hope so. I hope he’s still with me. I’m writing them for him. PRAISE THE GOLDEN COMPASS —Winner of the Carnegie Medal —An American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) Award Winner “As always, Pullman is a master at combining impeccable characterizations and seamless plotting, maintaining a crackling pace to create scene upon scene of almost unbearable tension. This glittering gem will leave readers of all ages eagerly awaiting the next installment of Lyra’s adventures.”—Starred, Publishers Weekly THE SUBTLE KNIFE —An ALA Best Books for Young Adults “More than fulfilling the promise of The Golden Compass, this second volume starts off at a heart-thumping pace and never slows down. . . . The grandly exuberant storytelling is sure to enthrall.”—Starred, Publishers Weekly “The intricacy of the plot is staggering. . . . There is no doubt that the work is stunningly ambitious, original, and fascinating.”—Starred, The Horn Book Magazine “The character development as well as the relentless pace . . . make this a resoundingly successful sequel. . . . It will leave readers desperate for the next installment.”—Starred, Booklist THE AMBER SPYGLASS —A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age “Pullman has created the last great fantasy masterpiece of the twentieth century.”—The Cincinnati Enquirer “Absorbing. . . . Like Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling, [Pullman] invents a world filled with strange divinations and wordplays.”—Newsweek “A literary masterpiece . . . [that] caps the most magnificent fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings and puts Harry Potter to shame. . . . A page-turning story that builds to a powerful finish.”—Oregonian “Impossible to put down, so firmly and relentlessly does Pullman draw you into his tale. . . . [A] gripping saga pitting the magnetic young Lyra Belacqua and her friend Will Parry against the forces of both Heaven and Hell.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette I WAS A RAT! “Phillip Pullman's tale is fast and clever.”—The New York Times Book Review COUNT KARLSTEIN “In this deliciously gothic thriller there are enough demon huntsmen, evil guardians, and brooding castles to please even the most desensitized reader.”—Starred, School Library Journal “A welcome diversion . . . [that is] dashing, sparkling, and wildly over the top.”—Starred, Publishers Weekly
		Douglas Adams Douglas Adams was born in 1952 and educated at Cambridge. He was the author of five books in the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy, including The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; and Mostly Harmless. His other works include Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency; The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul; The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff (with John Lloyd); and Last Chance to See (with Mark Carwardine). His last book was the bestselling collection, The Salmon of Doubt, published posthumously in May 2002. You can find more about Douglas Adam's life and works at douglasadams.com.
		Noah Adams Noah Adams is a senior correspondent for NPR News. In his current position, he works with NPR's National Desk to cover stories on the working poor across America. He lives with his wife, Neenah Ellis, a freelance journalist, in Takoma Park, Maryland.
		Poppy Adams Poppy Adams has worked as a documentary filmmaker for the BBC and the Discovery Channel. She lives with her husband and three children in London, where she is working on her next book.
		Richard Adams Richard Adams was born in 1920. In the mid-sixties he completed his first novel, Watership Down, the story of which he originally told his children to while away time on a long car journey. His many other books include the novels Shardik, The Plague Dogs, The Girl in a Swing, Maia and, Traveller; his autobiography The Day Gone By; and several books on the natural world. He and his wife, who have two daughters,live in the South of England.
		Warren Adler Warren Adler is the author of several novels, including The War of the Roses, which was filmed with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was educated in the New York City school system and graduated from New York University with a B.A. in English. He is married and has three sons.
		Boris Akunin BORIS AKUNIN is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in the Republic of Georgia in 1956. A philologist, critic, essayist, and translator of Japanese, Akunin published his first detective stories in 1998 and has already become one of the most widely read authors in Russia. He is the author of eleven Erast Fandorin novels, including The Winter Queen, The Turkish Gambit, Murder on the Leviathan, The Death of Achilles, and Special Assignments, available from Random House Trade Paperbacks; and Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog and Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk, in the Sister Pelagia series. He lives in Moscow.
		Mitch Albom Mitch Albom writes for the Detroit Free Press, and has been voted America's No. 1 sports columnist ten times by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Albom, a former professional musician, hosts a daily radio show on WJR in Detroit and appears regularly on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters." He is the author of Bo and Fab Five, both national bestsellers, and has also published four collections of his columns. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan.
		Louisa May Alcott Louisa May Alcott, born in 1832, was the second child of Bronson Alcott of Concord, Massachusetts, a self-taught philosopher, school reformer, and utopian who was much too immersed in the world of ideas to ever succeed in supporting his family. That task fell to his wife and later to his enterprising daughter Louisa May. While her father lectured, wrote, and conversed with such famous friends as Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, Louisa taught school, worked as a seamstress and nurse, took in laundry, and even hired herself out as a domestic servant at age nineteen. The small sums she earned often kept the family from complete destitution, but it was through her writing that she finally brought them financial independence. “I will make a battering-ram of my head,” she wrote in her journal, “and make a way through this rough-and-tumble world.” An enthusiastic participant in amateur theatricals since age ten, she wrote her first melodrama at age fifteen and began publishing poems and sketches at twenty-one. Her brief service as a Civil War nurse resulted in Hospital Sketches (1863), but she earned more from the lurid thrillers she began writing in 1861 under the pseudonym of A.M. Barnard. These tales, with titles like “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,” featured strong-willed and flamboyant heroines but were not identified as Alcott’s work until the 1940s. Fame and success came unexpectedly in 1868. When a publisher suggested she write a “girl’s book,” she drew on her memories of her childhood and wrote Little Women, depicting herself as Jo March, while her sisters Anna, Abby May, and Elizabeth became Meg, Amy, and Beth. She re-created the high spirits of the Alcott girls and took many incidents from life but made the March family financially comfortable as the Alcotts never had been. Little Women, to its author’s surprise, struck a cord an America’s largely female reading public and became a huge success. Louisa was prevailed upon to continue the story, which she did in Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886.) In 1873 she published Work: A Story of Experience, an autobiography in fictional disguise with an all too appropriate title. Now a famous writer, she continued to turn out novels and stories and to work for the women’s suffrage and temperance movements, as her father had worked for the abolitionists. Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott both died in Boston in the same month, March of 1888.
		Alan Alda Alan Alda is the author of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself and Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. He is the winner of numerous awards, including six Emmys and six Golden Globes, and has been nominated for an Academy Award. He played Hawkeye Pierce for eleven years on the television series M*A*S*H, has acted in, written, and directed many feature films, and has appeared often on Broadway. His avid interest in science has led to his hosting PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers for eleven years. He is married to the children’s book author and photographer Arlene Alda. They have three grown children and seven grandchildren.
		Caroline Alexander Caroline Alexander has written for The New Yorker, Granta, Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, Outside, and National Geographic, and is the author of four previous books. She is the curator of "Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Expedition," an exhibition that will open at the American Museum of Natural History in March 1999. She lives on a farm in New Hampshire.
		Lloyd Alexander “Whether writing realism or fantasy, my concern is the same: how we learn to be genuine human beings.”—Lloyd Alexander Lloyd Alexander has received a Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor Award, a National Book Award, and several IRA-CBC Children’s Choice Awards. He is also the author of many ALA Notable Children’s Books and School Library Journal Best Books of the Year. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born on January 30, 1924, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, storyteller Lloyd Alexander spent his childhood filling his imagination with fantasies about other lands and eras. Ever since young Alexander first discovered a copy of the King Arthur legends in the back of a stationery store, he diligently searched out every hero tale and legend he could get his hands on. He says, “I read as long as I could remember. Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers. I loved all the world’s mythologies; King Arthur was one of my heroes; I played with a trash can lid for a knightly shield, and my uncle’s cane for the sword Excalibur.” At fifteen, in his last year of high school, Alexander announced to his parents that he intended to become a poet. They agreed he could pursue this career on the condition that he also find some type of practical work. So, upon graduation, Alexander grudgingly accepted a job as a messenger in a bank. He says, “I felt like Robin Hood chained in the Sheriff of Nottingham’s dungeon. As a would-be writer, I thought it was a catastrophe. As a bank employee, I could barely add or subtract, and had to count on my fingers.” Realizing there was still a lot to learn before he could consider himself a writer, Lloyd Alexander enrolled at a local college. However, he soon decided that adventure and experience were what he really needed, and quit school to join the army. In the midst of World War II, Alexander was stationed in Texas, and became an artilleryman, a cymbal player in the band, an organist in the post chapel, and finally, a first-aid man. Later, he was assigned to a military intelligence training center in Maryland. Eventually, he and his group sailed to England and were sent to Wales to finish their training. When the war ended, Alexander was assigned to a counterintelligence unit in Paris. Later, he was discharged to attend the University of Paris, and met Janine, the woman who became his wife. The young couple returned to the United States, where Alexander struggled to get his novels published. To earn a living, he worked as a cartoonist, advertising writer, layout artist, and associate editor for a small magazine. After seven years of rejections, his first novel was published. For ten years, Alexander wrote for adults, then changed gears and wrote fiction for young people. This, Alexander says, was “the most creative and liberating experience of my life. In books for young people, I was able to express my own deepest feelings far more than I could ever do in writing for adults.” Most of Alexander’s books have been of the fantasy genre. But fantasy, Alexander believes, is merely one of many ways to express attitudes and feelings about real people, real human relationships and problems. That is why his books evoke such deep responses from young and old readers alike. In addition to writing, Lloyd Alexander enjoys music, especially Mozart. He also likes to create drawings, cartoons, and etchings. He lives with his wife and their cats in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, and is currently author-in-residence at Temple University in Philadelphia. “I never did find out all I wanted to know about writing,” Lloyd Alexander says, “and I realize I never will. All that writers can do is to keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts. If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.” PRAISE THE BLACK CAULDRON —A Newbery Honor Book —An ALA Notable Children’s Book “The reader’s involvement is intense as the excitement leads up to the climactic meeting of tragedy and triumph.”—The Horn Book Magazine THE HIGH KING —A Newbery Medal Winner —A Child Study Children’s Book Committee Children’s Book of the Year “Has the philosophical depth and overtones of great fantasy. ”—The Horn Book Magazine THE CAT WHO WISHED TO BE A MAN “Infused with humor, high spirits and compassion, Lionel’s story is a parable of the human condition that recognizes mankind’s many frailties without despairing and offers hope that love and justice may sometimes prevail.”—Starred, School Library Journal THE DRACKENBERG ADVENTURE —A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age “Alexander is to be commended for his elegant writing, astute characterizations, and his presentation of an intelligent heroine.”—Starred, Booklist THE EL DORADO ADVENTURE “Plenty of action and a number of cliffhangers that create an episodic quality reminiscent of old Saturday matinee serials.”—Starred, School Library Journal THE REMARKABLE JOURNEY OF PRINCE JEN “Enthralling . . . it is not often that a book can tell a breathtaking story, offer useful lessons on life, and paint a lively cultural backdrop. Alexander has done all that and more.”—Starred, Booklist
		Robert Allen Robert G. Allen has probably helped create more millionaires in North America than any other single person and is the author of some of the most successful financial books in history. His first two books, Nothing Down and Creating Wealth, have each sold more than a million copies, and his other books—Multiple Streams of Income, Multiple Streams of Internet Income, and The One Minute Millionaire (coauthored with Mark Victor Hansen)—have also been major New York Times bestsellers.
		Sarah Addison Allen Sarah Addison Allen lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she is at work on her next novel.
		Isabel Allende Isabel Allende is Chilean and worked for many years as a journalist. She now lives in the San Francisco Bay area and has recently published her fourth novel.
		Aaron Allston Aaron Allston is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Exile; two Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Enemy Lines novels: Rebel Dream and Rebel Stand; novels in the popular Star Wars X-Wing series; and the Doc Sidhe novels, which combine 1930s-style hero-pulps with Celtic myth. He is also a longtime game designer and was recently inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design (AAGAD) Hall of Fame. He lives in Central Texas. Visit his website at www.AaronAllston.com.
		David Almond “Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are living things—among the most important things in the world.”—David Almond David Almond is the winner of the 2001 Michael L. Printz Award for Kit’s Wilderness, which has also been named best book of the year by School Library Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. His first book for young readers, Skellig, is a Printz Honor winner. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Miraculous beings living in a miraculous world . . . Maybe it comes from my religious upbringing (I grew up in a big Catholic family): I do feel that we are miraculous beings living in a miraculous world. Sometimes the explanations we’re given—and the possibilities we’re offered—are just too restricted and mechanistic. Stories offer us a place to explore (as writers and readers) what it is to be fully human. I do think that young people are interested in the major questions—Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there a God?—and they’re willing to contemplate all kinds of possibilities. They haven’t yet become tired by such questions. Brutality has to be allowed its place . . . Ten minutes of TV news is enough to convince anybody that the world is a pretty brutal place. We aren’t yet perfect people living in a perfect world—and we never will be—so brutality has to be allowed its place. But the world also contains great tenderness, joy, hope, etc. I suppose that in my books I explore a world and people that are made up of opposites: good and evil, light and darkness, the beautiful and the ugly. And I hope that in the end, goodness, light, and beauty will have some kind of upper hand. Stories as a whole form a kind of community . . . The stories in Counting Stars don’t have a straightforward chronological progression, but there are many links between the different stories. They form a kind of mosaic. Themes hinted at in one story are developed in another. Characters are seen in different situations/settings. I like to think that the stories as a whole form a kind of community or family. It’s often said that there’s a big difference between writing short stories and novels, but I’m not so sure. I think of my novels as a series of scenes/chapters, each of which I write with the same kind of attention I’d give to a short story. A readership of four . . . When I began to write Counting Stars, I wanted to write about my sisters and brother, and to use their real names, so I needed their permission. I worried that they wouldn’t be happy about the book. So I invited them all to my house for dinner, and afterwards I told them my plans, and I nervously read one of the first stories, “The Fusilier.” If they had said no to using their real names, Counting Stars would have been a very different book—and maybe wouldn’t have been written at all. But they said yes! Over the next couple of years, after I’d written each story, I sent copies to my brother and three sisters, so that they could see how things were developing. So, in a sense, the book was written for a readership of four people. Staring out of the window . . . I write at home, in a little office overlooking the back garden. I scribble in an artist’s sketchbook and type onto an AppleMac computer. I work all day—though some of that time will involve staring out of the window and eating apples. But I also travel quite a lot, so I’m used to writing on trains, in hotels, etc. I used to wonder if I'd ever be able to write a novel properly . . . For many years, I wrote nothing but short stories, and I used to wonder if I’d ever be able to write a novel properly. I wrote the stories in Counting Stars before I wrote Skellig, my first children’s novel. I wrote them over a two-year period. As I wrote them, I found myself exploring childhood experience from a child’s point of view. I rediscovered the powerful imaginative and emotional nature of childhood. Really, writing these stories changed me into a writer for children/young adults. Messing about with paper clips . . . I always wanted to be a writer. I wrote little books and stories as a boy, and wanted to see my books on the shelves of our little local library right next to my favorite books: King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, The Day of the Triffids, and The Adventures of Turkey. But as for writing, I simply like it all—right from creating new stories to messing about with paper clips. The best piece of writing advice I’ve ever received: Don't give up. It’s often children who read the books with the most insight . . . I think that children can be much more perceptive, creative, and intelligent than we give them credit for. I see this in the many letters I get from my readers and in the things that they say when I meet them. Some adults assume that children will never “get” the more complex aspects of my books, but in fact it’s often children who read the books with the most insight. PRAISE SKELLIG —A Michael L. Printz Honor Book —An ALA Notable Book —A New York Times Best Book “A lovingly done, thought-provoking novel.”—Starred, School Library Journal “An amazing work. Some of the writing takes one’s breath away.”—Starred, Booklist “Almond makes a triumphant debut in the field of children’s literature with prose that is at once eerie, magical, and poignant.”—Starred, Publishers Weekly KIT’S WILDERNESS —A Michael L. Printz Award Winner —An ALA Notable Book —A Publishers Weekly Best Book “A highly satisfying literary experience.”—Starred, School Library Journal “Almond has set an enormous task for himself . . . but he succeeds beautifully.”—Starred, Booklist HEAVEN EYES “An awe-inspiring, multilayered novel from a master imagist.”—School Library Journal, Starred
		Julia Alvarez “Mi casa, su casa. Mi libro, su libro. My house is your house. My book, your book.”—Julia Alvarez Julia Alvarez grew up in the Dominican Republic before emigrating to the United States at the age of 10. She is the award-winning author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, ¡Yo!, and the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, In the Time of the Butterflies. Her books for young readers include Before We Were Free, How Tía Lola Came to (Visit) Stay, and the picture book, The Secret Footprints.
		Daniel G. Amen Daniel G. Amen, M.D., is a clinical neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and brain-imaging expert who heads up the world-renowned Amen Clinics. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and has won numerous writing and research awards. He writes a monthly column in Men’s Health called “Head Check” and has published nineteen books, numerous professional and popular articles, and a number of audio and video programs. His books include Preventing Alzheimer’s, Healing Anxiety and Depression, Healing the Hardware of the Soul, Healing ADD, and the New York Times bestseller Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. He is an internationally renowned keynote speaker and a popular guest expert for the media, with appearances on CNN, the Today show, The View, and other venues.
		Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen (1805—75) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker, who nonetheless was a great reader, made a toy-theatre for his son and taught him to notice every natural wonder as they walked in the woods together on Sundays. His father died when he was eleven, and it wasn't until six years later that, with the help of a patron, he finally went to a state secondary school attended by much youger children. There he suffered at the hands of a cruel headmaster, but he aquired an education and was determined to be a writer. He published his first novel and his first fairy tales in 1835; thereafter he wrote over 150 more of these stories which have become classics in many languages. A lonely man who never married, he was also an anxious man; he loved travelling, but would carry a coil of rope with him in case of fire in his hotel. Although he originally addressed his fairy tales to children (and some would maintain he had a streak of childhood in his nature) he insisted they were 'for all ages', and the gentleness and humor that are their characteristics are recognized by everyone.
		Laurie Halse Anderson Laurie Halse Anderson grew up in Syracuse, New York, and now lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two daughters. This is her first novel. She is also the author of three picture boooks, No Time for Mother's Day, Turkey Pox, and Ndito Runs.
		Maya Angelou Maya Angelou is an accomplished poet, an award-winning writer, a journalist, an activist, a performer, a dancer, an actress, a director, and a teacher. She is also a three-time Grammy Award winner for her autobiographical spoken-word recordings. Born in St. Louis, she was raised in Stamps, Arkansas, and then went to San Francisco. She lives in Harlem, NY, and Winston-Salem, NC. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she has also written poetry collections, including I Shall Not Be Moved and Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?, and a number of books for young readers, including Kofi and His Magic; My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me; and the Maya's World series.
		Tina Mcelroy Ansa Tina McElroy Ansa's first novel, Baby of the Family, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times in 1989. Her second novel, Ugly Ways, was published in 1993. She lives with her husband, JonÚe, a filmmaker, on St. Simons Island, off the coast of Georgia.
		Alan Armstrong Alan Armstrong started volunteering in a friend’s bookshop when he was eight. At 14, he was selling books at Brentano’s. As an adult, every so often, he takes to the road in a VW bus named Zora to peddle used books. He is the editor of Forget Not Mee & My Garden, a collection of the letters of Peter Collinson, the 18th-century mercer and amateur botanist. He lives with his wife, Martha, a painter, in Massachusetts.
		Jennifer Armstrong “Why do I write historical fiction? Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins—that’s why. I'll never forget how it felt to read those books. I want to write books with the same power to transport readers into another time and place.”—Jennifer Armstrong Jennifer Armstrong is the winner of the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. Many of her books have been designated as Notable Books by the American Library Association and the International Reading Association. Ever since the first grade, Jennifer Armstrong knew that she would become an author. She loved making up stories and sharing them with others. Her family treasured books and this led her to become an avid reader of all types of fiction. It was no surprise when she chose to study English and American literature at Smith College in Massachusetts. Armstrong is the author of over 50 books for children from kindergarten through high school. Best known for writing historical fiction, she has also been successful in creating picture books, easy readers, chapter books, young adult novels, as well as nonfiction. Armstrong, who grew up outside of New York City, now lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. For more information on Jennifer Armstrong, visit her website at www.jennifer-armstrong.com, or read her blog at www.jennifer-armstrong.blogspot.com.
		Karen Armstrong Karen Armstrong’s first book, the bestselling Through the Narrow Gate, described her seven years as a nun in a Roman Catholic order. She has since published numerous bestselling books, including A History of God, Islam: A Short History, Buddha, The Spiral Staircase and most recently The Great Transformation. She is a freelance writer and she lives in London.
		Keri Arthur Keri Arthur first started writing when she was twelve years old, and to date, she's finished fifteen novels. Her books have received many nominations and prizes, including making the final five in the Random House Australia George Turner Prize. She has also been nominated in the Best Contemporary Paranormal category of the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Awards, received a 'perfect 10' from Romance Reviews Today, as well as being nominated for Best Shapeshifter in PNR's PEARL Awards. She's a dessert and function cook by trade, and married to a wonderful man who not only supports her writing, but who also does the majority of the housework. They have one daughter, and live in Melbourne, Australia.
		Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov began his Foundation Series at the age of twenty-one, not realizing that it woudl one day be considered a conerstone of science fiction. During his legendary career, Asimov penned over 470 books on subjects ranging from science to Shakespeare to histroy, though he was most loved for his award-winning science fiction sagas, whcih include the Robot, Empire, and Foundation series. Named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Asimov entertained and educated readers of all ages for close to five decades. He died, at the age of seventy-two, in April 1992.
		Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939, and grew up in northern Quebec and Ontario, and later in Toronto. She has lived in numerous cities in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. She is the author of more than forty books — novels, short stories, poetry, literary criticism, social history, and books for children. Atwood’s work is acclaimed internationally and has been published around the world. Her novels include The Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye — both shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Robber Bride, winner of the Trillium Book Award and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award; Alias Grace, winner of the prestigious Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy, and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize and a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and Oryx and Crake, a finalist for The Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Orange Prize, and the Man Booker Prize. Her most recent books of fiction are The Penelopiad, The Tent, and Moral Disorder. She is the recipient of numerous honours, such as The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence in the U.K., the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature in the U.S., Le Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and she was the first winner of the London Literary Prize. She has received honorary degrees from universities across Canada, and one from Oxford University in England. Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with novelist Graeme Gibson.
		Louis Auchincloss Louis Auchincloss is the author of many novels and story collections, most recently Her Infinite Variety. He lives in New York City.
		Jean M. Auel Jean M. Auel is an international phenomenon. Her books have sold 34 million copies worldwide. Her extensive research has earned her the respect of archaeologists and anthropologists around the world. She lives with her husband, Ray, in Oregon, where she is at work on the next book in the Earth’s Children® series.
		Jane Austen Though the domain of Jane Austen’s novels was as circumscribed as her life, her caustic wit and keen observation made her the equal of the greatest novelists in any language. Born the seventh child of the rector of Steventon, Hampshire, on December 16, 1775, she was educated mainly at home. At an early age she began writing sketches and satires of popular novels for her family’s entertainment. As a clergyman’s daughter from a well-connected family, she had an ample opportunity to study the habits of the middle class, the gentry, and the aristocracy. At twenty-one, she began a novel called “The First Impressions” an early version of Pride and Prejudice. In 1801, on her father’s retirement, the family moved to the fashionable resort of Bath. Two years later she sold the first version of Northanger Abby to a London publisher, but the first of her novels to appear was Sense and Sensibility, published at her own expense in 1811. It was followed by Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). After her father died in 1805, the family first moved to Southampton then to Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. Despite this relative retirement, Jane Austen was still in touch with a wider world, mainly through her brothers; one had become a very rich country gentleman, another a London banker, and two were naval officers. Though her many novels were published anonymously, she had many early and devoted readers, among them the Prince Regent and Sir Walter Scott. In 1816, in declining health, Austen wrote Persuasion and revised Northanger Abby, Her last work, Sandition, was left unfinished at her death on July 18, 1817. She was buried in Winchester Cathedral. Austen’s identity as an author was announced to the world posthumously by her brother Henry, who supervised the publication of Northanger Abby and Persuasion in 1818.
		Ian Ayres Ian Ayres, an econometrician and lawyer, is the William K. Townsend Professor at Yale Law School, and a professor at Yale's School of Management. He is a regular commentator on public radio's Marketplace and a columnist for Forbes magazine. He is currently the editor of the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, and has written eight books and more than a hundred articles.
		Natalie Babbitt Natalie Babbitt, who started as an illustrator, is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards for the children's books she has written.
		Linda Babcock Linda Babcock is a James M. Walton Professor of Economics at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, The Unicersity of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the California Institute of Technology. A specialist in negotiation and dispute resolution, her research has appeared in the most prestigious economics, inductrial relations, and law journals.
		David Bach David Bach is the author of six consecutive national bestsellers, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Start Late, Finish Rich and The Automatic Millionaire, as well as Smart Women Finish Rich, Smart Couples Finish Rich, The Finish Rich Workbook and The Automatic Millionaire Workbook. His Books have been translated into fifteen languages and have four million copies in print worldwide. David Bach has appeared twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show to share his strategies for living and finishing rich. His FinishRich® seminars have been taught in more than 2,000 cities throughout North America by thousands of financial advisors and have reached more than half a million people.
		John U. Bacon John U. Bacon, a veteran journalist and public speaker, has won numerous national writing awards and is the author of three books.
		Michael Baden Dr. Michael Baden is the former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City and is presently the chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police. He received a B.S. from the City College of New York and an M.D. from New York University School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine and pathology at Bellevue Hospital Medical Center where he was intern, resident and Chief Resident. He has been a medical examiner for forty-five years and has performed more than 20,000 medicolegal autopsies. He has held professorial teaching appointments at Albert Einstein Medical School, Albany Medical College, New York Law School and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He was Chairman of the Forensic Pathology Panel of the U.S. Congress Select Committee on Assassinations that re-investigated the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1970s. He was the forensic pathologist member of a team of U.S. forensic scientists asked by the Russian government to examine the newly found remains of Tsar Nicholas II, Alexandra and the Romanov family in Siberia in the 1990s. He has been an expert witness for prosecutors or defense attorneys in trials involving Medgar Evers, John Belushi, Yankee Manager Billy Martin, Marlon Brando’s son Christian, O.J. Simpson, Jayson Williams, Kobe Bryant, Robert Blake, Phil Spector and Las Vegas hotel owner Ted Binion. He has investigated deaths in Croatia, Serbia, Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Monaco, Colombia, Panama, England, Canada, Zimbabwe and other countries for attorneys and human rights groups. He has taught homicide courses for police, judges, attorneys, and physicians in most of the 50 states as well as in China, Taiwan, Kuwait, Australia, France, Italy and other countries. He has been on the board of directors of a number of drug abuse and alcohol abuse treatment programs where he attempts to apply what he has learned from the dead at the autopsy table to the betterment of the living. Dr. Baden has also served as President of the Society of Medical Jurisprudence and Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Science. He has been author or co-author of more than 80 professional articles and books on aspects of forensic medicine and two popular non-fiction books, Unnatural Death, Confessions of a Medical Examiner and Dead Reckoning, the New Science of Catching Killers. He is the host of the HBO Autopsy series, now in its twelfth year, which explains how the various forensic sciences assist in solving crimes. He is the forensic science contributor for Fox National News. He has also discussed forensic science issues on The View, Conan O’Brien, Charlie Rose, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, CNN, Court TV, Forensic Files, Discovery Channel, CNBC, MSNBC and many radio shows.
		Robert Baer Robert Baer spent twenty years running agents from inside the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, operating against Hizballah, Al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations, and “was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East” (Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker). His memoir See No Evil was a New York Times bestseller and inspired the movie Syriana starring George Clooney. He lives in Colorado.
		Tom Bailey Tom Bailey is the author of Crow Man, a collection of short stories, and A Short Story Writer’s Companion, and the editor of On Writing Short Stories. He lives with his wife and three children in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, where he teaches in the creative writing program at Susquehanna University. This is his first novel.
		David Baldacci David Baldacci lives in Virginia with his wife and children.
		Todd Balf Todd Balf, a former senior editor for Outside magazine, writes for Men's Journal, Fast Company and other publications. His cover story in Men's Journal on the Tsangpo and the Walker-McEwan expedition appeared in March 1999. He lives in Beverly, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.
		Mary Balogh Mary Balogh is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Slightly novels: Slightly Married, Slightly Wicked, Slightly Scandalous, Slightly Tempted, Slightly Sinful, and Slightly Dangerous, as well as the romances No Man’s Mistress, More than a Mistress, and One Night for Love. She is also the author of Simply Magic, Simply Love, and Simply Unforgettable, the first three books in her dazzling quartet of novels set at Miss Martin’s School for Girls. A former teacher herself, she grew up in Wales and now lives in Canada.
		James Bamford James Bamford is the author of The Puzzle Palace, a national bestseller when it was first published and now regarded as a classic. He was until recently Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and has written investigative cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine.
		Lynne Reid Banks Lynne Reid Banks was evacuated to Canada during World War II, and she returned to England in 1945 to study for the stage. She later became a freelance journalist and playwright and in 1955 became the first woman TV news reporter. She has written many books for children, teenagers, and adults including The Indian in the Cupboard adventures.
		John Banville John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970. Among his other books are Nightspawn, Birchwood, The Newton Letter, Mefisto, and The Book of Evidence (which was short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize). He has also received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. He is the former literary editor of the Irish Times and lives in Dublin.
		Neal Barnard NEAL BARNARD, M.D., is president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and a leading advocate for the critical role of diet in health. The author of six books and hundreds of articles, Dr. Barnard travels and lectures widely. He lives in Washington, D.C.
		John Barnes John A. Barnes has been a journalist, writer, speaker, and television commentator whose articles have appeared in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Reader's Digest, and America's Civil War. He is currently a corporate communications manager with Pfizer Inc. Mr. Barnes lives in New York City.
		Tracy Barrett Tracy Barrett holds a Ph.D. in Italian from the University of California at Berkeley.
		J.M. Barrie Sir James Mathew Barrie was born on May 9, 1860, at Kirriemuir in Scotland, the ninth of ten children of a weaver. When Barrie was six, his older brother David died in a skating accident. Barrie then became his mother’s chief comforter, while David remained in her memory a boy of thirteen who would never grow up. Barrie received his M.A. degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1882 and began working as a journalist. In 1885 he moved to London, and his writings were collected in Auld Licht Idlls (1888) and A Window in Thurns (1889), which, together with a sentimental novel, The Little Minister (1891), made him a best-selling author. In 1894 he married an actress, Mary Ansell, but the marriage was profoundly unhappy, produced no children, and was dissolved in 1910. However, a favorite Saint Bernard dog of Mary’s later became the famous Nana of Peter Pan. In 1897, with the adaptation of The Little Minister, Barrie became a successful playwright, writing the plays The Admirable Crichton (1902), What Every Woman Knows (1903), and Peter Pan (1904), which was produced in 1904 and revived in London every Christmas season thereafter. While the figure of Peter Pan first appeared in Barrie’s book The Little White Bird (1902), the story and the concept began in the tales Barrie told the sons of Mrs. Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, a woman Barrie loved. Barrie then published the story of Peter Pan in book form as Peter and Wendy (1911). The best of Barrie’s later works is Dear Brutus (1917), a haunting play that again brought the supernatural and fantasy to the London stage. Barrie died in 1937, bequeathing the copyright of Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, a hospital for children.
		Stephanie Barron Stephanie Barron is the author of eight previous Jane Austen mysteries. She lives in Colorado, where she is at work on the next Jane Austen mystery.
		T.A. Barron T.A. Barron grew up in the mountains of Colorado. He wrote his first novel at Oxford University between trips to the Highlands of Scotland. Now he writes in the attic of his Colorado home, assisted by his wife, Currie, and their five young children.
		Annie Barrows Mary Ann Shaffer worked as an editor, a librarian, and in bookshops. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was her first novel. Her niece, Annie Barrows, is the author of the children’s series Ivy and Bean, as well as The Magic Half.
		Dave Barry The New York Times has pronounced Dave Barry "the funniest man in America." But of course that could have been on a slow news day when there wasn't much else fit to print. True, his bestselling collections of columns are legendary, but it is his wholly original books, like this one, that reveal him as an American icon. Dave Barry Slept Here was his version of American history. Dave Barry Does Japan was a contribution to international peace and understanding from which Japan has not yet fully recovered. Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys is among the best-read volumes in rehab centers and prisons. And now, with his take on American politics and, especially, Washington, D.C., he takes his place with de Tocqueville and Larry King as a truly infamous explicator of and commentator on the process by which we find, fund, and... (fill in your own four-letter word here) our pols and public servants. Raised in a suburb of New York, educated in a suburb of Philadelphia, he lives now in a suburb of Miami. (Won't they let him into the cities? Read him on, for example, Miami, which played such a pivotal role in the last presidential election, and you'll understand why.) He is not, as he often puts it so poetically, making this up.
		Kemp Battle Kemp Battle lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, with his wife and four children. An investment banker, he is also the author of Great American Folklore.
		Brett Battles Brett Battles lives and writes in Los Angeles. The Cleaner is his debut novel, and he is currently at work on the next book featuring Jonathan Quinn.
		Joan Bauer Joan Bauer worked as a freelancer for broadcast and television before she started writing children’s books. Her first book was an immediate successful and received several awards. Joan Bauer lives with her husband and her children in Darien, Connecticut. Joan Bauer arbeitete zunächst als freie Autorin für Rundfunk und Fernsehen, bevor sie mit dem Schreiben von Jugendbüchern begann. Ihr erstes Jugendbuch wurde sofort ein Erfolg und erhielt mehrere Auszeichnungen. „Amor, Herzkönig und ich“ ist ihr zweites Buch. Joan Bauer lebt mit ihrem Mann und ihrer Tochter in Darien, Connecticut.
		Marion Dane Bauer Marion Dane Bauer has written numerous award-winning books, among them On My Honor, a Newbery Honor Book.
		Martha Beck Martha Beck, Ph.D., is a life coach and monthly columnist for O: The Oprah Magazine. She has taught career development at the American Graduate School of International Management and was research assistant to Dr. John Kotter at Harvard Business School. She is the author of the bestsellers Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live and the memoir Expecting Adam. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
		John Berendt John Berendt writes a monthly column for Esquire. He has been the editor of New York magazine and lives in New York.
		A. Scott Berg A. Scott Berg graduated from Princeton University in 1971. He is the author of the bestselling books Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, which won the National Book Award and Goldwyn: A Biography, for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles. About the Reader Eric Stoltz is an actor/producer whose film credits include Mask, Pulp Fiction, The Waterdance, Little Women, and Rob Roy. New York stage credits include Our Town, Three Sisters, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Glass Menagerie, and Arms and the Man.
		Elizabeth Berg Elizabeth Berg is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including Dream When You're Feeling Blue, We Are All Welcome Here, The Year of Pleasures, The Art of Mending, Say When, True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY Award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, Berg is also the author of a nonfiction work, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago. To schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau at www.apbspeakers.com
		Laurence Bergreen Laurence Bergreen is the prize-winning author of Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, as well as James Agee: A Life; Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life; Capone: The Man and the Era; and As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, each considered the definitive work on its subject. A graduate of Harvard University, he lives in New York City.  As part of the research for this book, he traveled Marco Polo's route across Mongolia and China.   Laurence Bergreen is represented by the Knopf Speakers Bureau (http://www.knopfspeakersbureau.com).
		William Bernhardt William Bernhardt is the author of fourteen books, including Primary Justice, Perfect Justice, Double Jeopardy, Naked Justice?which led Library Journal to dub the author ?master of the courtroom drama??Silent Justice, and Murder One. He has twice won the Oklahoma Book Award for Best Fiction and in 2000 he was presented the H. Louise Cobb Distinguished Author Award ?in recognition of an outstanding body of work that has profoundly influenced the way in which we understand ourselves and American society at large.? A former trial attorney, Bernhardt has received several awards for his public service. He lives in Tulsa with his wife, Kirsten, and their children, Harry, Alice, and Ralph.
		Carl Bernstein Carl Bernstein shared a Pulitzer Prize with Bob Woodward for his coverage of Watergate for The Washington Post. He is the author, with Woodward, of All the President’s Men and The Final Days, and, with Marco Politi, of His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time. He is also the author of Loyalties, a memoir about his parents during McCarthy-era Washington. He has written for Vanity Fair (he is also a contributing editor), Time, USA Today, Rolling Stone, and The New Republic. He was a Washington bureau chief and correspondent for ABC News. He lives with his wife, Christine, in New York.
		Peter W. Bernstein Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan are veteran journalists and editors who between them have worked at U.S. News & World Report, Time, Newsweek, and Fortune magazines over the last twenty-five years. Bernstein is the coeditor of The New York Times Practical Guide to Practically Everything and editor of The Ernst & Young Tax Guide. Bernstein and Swan are cofounders of ASAP Media, which helped produce Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind the Da Vinci Code. They live in New York City.
		Gary Berntsen GARY BERNTSEN served for more than two decades in the Central Intelligence Agency. He operated at the highest levels in the Middle East and Latin America and led the CIA’s major counterterrorist deployments in East Africa following the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. In hunting down Osama Bin Laden, he also commanded the most successful CIA paramilitary team ever assembled, a tale spellbindingly told in the New York Times bestseller Jawbreaker. Berntsen is a recipient of the CIA’s distinguished Intelligence Medal and Intelligence Star.
		Steve Berry Steve Berry is the New York Times bestselling author of The Alexandria Link, The Templar Legacy, The Third Secret, The Romanov Prophecy, and The Amber Room. His books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and sold in forty-two countries. A lawyer who has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Russia, he lives on the Georgia coast. He is currently at work on his next novel. www.steveberry.org
		Maeve Binchy Maeve Binchy was born and educated in Dublin. She is the bestselling author of The Return Journey, Evening Class, This Year It Will Be Different, and The Glass Lakes. She has written two plays and a teleplay that won three awards at the Prague Film Festival. She has been writing for The Irish Times since 1969 and lives with her husband, writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell, in Dublin.
		Jeanne Birdsall Jeanne Birdsall grew up in the suburbs west of Philadelphia, where she attended wonderful public schools. Jeanne had lots of great teachers, but her favorites were: Mrs. Corkhill, sixth grade, who encouraged her intellectual curiosity; Mr. Tremonte, eighth grade algebra, who taught Jeanne to love and respect math; and Miss Basehore, second and fourth year Latin, to whom Jeanne (and Mr. Penderwick) will be forever grateful. Although she first decided to become a writer when she was ten years old, it took Jeanne until she was forty-one to get started. In the years in between, Jeanne had many strange jobs to support herself while working hard as a photographer–the kind that makes art. Some of Jeanne's photographs are included in the permanent collections of museums, including the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Art Museum. Jeanne's home now is with her husband in Northampton, Massachusetts. Their house is old and comfortable, full of unruly animals, and surrounded by gardens.
		H.G. Bissinger Buzz Bissinger spent five and a half years writing this book, during which time he had exclusive access to Mayor Ed Rendell's administration. From 1981 to 1988 he was a reporter at The Philadelphia Enquirer, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, and later he worked for the Chicago Tribune. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1985-86 and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. He is the author of the acclaimed bestseller Friday Night Lights.
		Baxter Black Baxter Black is an irregular commentator on National Public Radio. He writes a weekly column, which currently appears in more than 100 publications. He lives in Arizona.
		Alice Blanchard Alice Blanchard won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction for her book of stories, The Stuntman's Daughter. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
		Ken Blanchard Worldwide bestselling author KEN BLANCHARD’s books have sold more than 18 million copies in twenty-five languages. He lives in San Diego, California.
		Edward Bloor How I became a reader: I think, like a lot of readers, I got my start because I had nothing better to do. One day when the TV was broken and no one was around and I had no money to do anything else, I picked up a book. What began as a desperate attempt to kill time, at some point, turned into what I actually chose to do with my time. I can remember the feeling of being anxious to get back to a book to find out what would happen next, and the feeling of being sorry that a book was coming to an end. Since those early days, reading a book has always been an entertainment option for me, and I count myself lucky for that. Had I the range of options that kids have today, it probably wouldn’t have happened. Like everybody else, I’d just be staring at a laptop all day or poking at my phone, sending misspelled, ungrammatical instant messages to fellow nonreaders. How I became a writer: I loved reading. It truly did entertain me and inform me. I loved watching movies, too, for the same reasons. In fact, I can remember a time when I truly liked every book I read and every movie I saw. That was a golden era and, of course, nothing gold can stay. I soon started to read books and watch movies that I did not like. At some point, I started to resent such books and movies and think that even I could do better. That’s when I became a writer, albeit a bad one. I started writing funny, semi-plagiarized stories to amuse family and friends. Family and friends didn’t really care how good they were, or if they were semi-plagiarized. Like me in my golden age, they liked everything they saw. Their positive feedback, though, gave me a whole new identity. I can remember the feeling, the great feeling, of having entertained people with my writing, and I continue to pursue that feeling today. What is real in my novels: In Tangerine, the soccer playing and the inside middle school stuff are real. I played soccer from the age of eight right into college. I taught in a middle school in Florida. I am also married to a middle school teacher, and I have two kids who went to middle school. I am all over that topic. In Crusader, the mall politics, the inside high school stuff, and the poverty are real. I worked in several malls, I taught in a high school, and I lived with very little money. I never want to do any of those things again. In Story Time, the standardized testing is real. I work in educational publishing, actually developing tests that school districts use to suck the life out of reading and writing. I wrote this novel as a kind of penance. The undervaluing of teachers is, of course, real too. In London Calling, the New Jersey childhood and the Catholic school experience are real. I am the sixth generation of my family to have lived Trenton, New Jersey, a city where, at least in the 1950s and 60s, all the white kids attended Catholic schools. My family was originally from England, as is my wife’s. We made two trips there while I was working on this novel, so many of the things in London and York are real, too.
		Roy Blount Roy Blount, Jr. is the author of ninteen other books, most recently Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans. He is a panelist on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, a columnist for Oxford American, a contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly, and president of the Authors Guild. he lives in western Massachussetts. Roy Blount, Jr. is represented by the Knopf Speakers Bureau (http://www.knopfspeakersbureau.com).
		Howard Blum HOWARD BLUM is the author of eight previous books, including the national bestsellers Wanted!, The Gold of Exodus, and Gangland. Currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, Blum was also a reporter at the New York Times, where he won numerous journalism awards and was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting.
		David Bodanis David Bodanis has taught intellectual history at Oxford and is the author of several books, including The Secret House and E=mc2. A native of Chicago, he lives in London.
		Tom Bodett Tom Bodett is a storyteller recognized for his warm, humorous style, but he is perhaps best known as the spokesperson for Motel 6. He made his national broadcasting debut in 1984 as a commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered; he currently hosts the PBS/Travel Channel co-production Travels on America's Historic Trails with Tom Bodett, which has received two Emmy nominations. His voice can also be heard on Steven Spielberg's Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Saturday Night Live, and National Geographic Explorer. He is the author of five books and has recorded fifteen audiocassettes. He has lived in Alaska for the past twenty-three years.
		Peter Bodo PETER BODO is a senior editor and chief columnist at Tennis magazine.
		Chris Bohjalian CHRIS BOHJALIAN is the critically acclaimed author of eleven novels, including Midwives (a Publishers Weekly Best Book and an Oprah’s Book Club selection), Before You Know Kindness, and his most recent New York Times bestseller, The Double Bind. His work has been translated into nineteen languages and published in twenty-two countries. He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter. Visit the author at www.chrisbohjalian.com.
		Will Bowen WILL BOWEN is the lead minister at Christ Church Unity in Kansas City, MO. Prior to entering the ministry, he spent many years in radio and in sales and marketing. His passions are exercise, Bible history, juggling, horseback riding, traveling, and reading, He and his wife, Gail, have a daughter, Lia. The Bowen family live in rural Missouri with several horses, dogs, and cats.
		John Boyne I stated writing at a very young age, not long after I first started reading and discovered the joys of getting lost in someone else’s world. When I was a child, I wrote hundreds of stories and bound them up together like books, writing my name on the spine and putting them on the bookshelves in my bedroom. I don’t have any of those stories any more. but I wish I did. Maybe I could still get some ideas from them. At the age of 10, I was in hospital for a week for an operation and my mother gave me a copy of The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis to read. By the time I was recovered I’d read all seven of the Narnia books and fell in love with the idea of adventure stories, particularly ones that included children like me who were in peril and had to use their wits and ingenuity to get out of trouble. The next book I remember that had a big effect on me was The Silver Sword by Ian Serailler. This tale of four children fleeing Poland during World War II was perhaps the most important book of my childhood, combining my love of heroic adventure stories with my growing interest in history. It forced me to think about what children my own age had gone through during the war and question whether I would have been as brave and strong as they were. Twenty years later it influenced my writing of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as I tried to tell a story about this terrible time in human history with as much integrity and compassion as Serailler had. When I was a young teenager, I discovered Charles Dickens and his novels have had the greatest effect on me as both a reader and writer. I particularly loved the orphan novels–David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby–books that began with a young boy left alone in the world, with no one or nothing to rely on other than his own resourcefulness. Because so many of Dickens’ novels were originally serialised in magazines, Dickens had a tremendous talent for finishing each chapter with a cliff-hanger, forcing me to leave the light on just a little longer to find out what happened next . . . and next . . . and next. My life has always been filled with books and I never wanted to be anything but a writer. One of the great thrills over the last year of my life since publishing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in the U.K. has been visiting schools and classrooms, talking to young children about the issues raised in the novel, but also discussing reading and writing in general. To my delight there’s a lot of young writers out there with great imaginations and stories to tell. I’ll be looking forward to their own books 20 years from now.
		Ray Bradbury Ray Bradbury is America's foremost writer of science fiction and fantasy. Among his most popular adult books are FAHRENHEIT 451, THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, DANDELION WINE, and DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS. In addition, he has written several books for children, including SWITCH ON THE NIGHT. He lives in Los Angeles.
		Barbara Taylor Bradford Barbara Taylor Bradford was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, and was a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post at sixteen. By the age of twenty, she had become both an editor and a columnist on London’s Fleet Street. In 1979 she wrote her first novel, A Woman of Substance, and that enduring bestseller was followed by sixteen others. Ten have been made into television miniseries and movies of the week. Her novels have sold more than sixty-three million copies in thirty-nine languages worldwide. She lives in New York City with her husband, producer Robert Bradford.
		James Bradley James Bradley is the son of John "Doc" Bradley, one of the six flagraisers. A speaker and a writer, he lives in Rye, New York. Ron Powers is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He is the author of White Town Drowsing and Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain. He lives in Vermont.
		Rick Bragg Rick Bragg is the author of two best-selling books, Ava’s Man and All Over but the Shoutin’. He divides his time between New Orleans and his native Alabama. Rick Bragg is represented by the Knopf Speakers Bureau (http://www.knopfspeakersbureau.com).
		Robin Brande In Her Own Words Not being a science girl myself, I knew if I were going to write a novel like Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature, I’d better spend a proper amount of time doing research. So I’m sorry to say I gave up many lazy summer days (okay, maybe weeks) to plow through Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, highlighting and underlining and giving myself some massive headaches, before I realized there was a much easier way to go about it. So that fall I went back to high school. I sat in on freshman biology classes for a month. And not only did I pick up the science I needed, but I also had the glorious experience of being back in high school and not caring whether I impressed anyone. Do you know how liberating that is? Who knew it was possible to walk those halls without worrying about your skin, your hair, your clothes, your braces, that stupid thing you just blurted out in chemistry, that boy you just totally humiliated yourself in front of–I mean I had no idea it was possible to actually walk upright and look people in the eye. Fascinating. I just finished writing another novel that again “required” me to go back to high school. I hope nobody notices I’m making a habit of this. The other element to Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature–the religious part–came more naturally. I grew up fundamentalist Baptist, and I have enough stories from that to last me quite a while. I loved, loved, loved my religious upbringing, but there were definitely some odd times, including the one that ultimately led to me being banished from my church. But that’s a whole other story. The thing that I enjoyed most about writing this novel was articulating for myself what it is I believe about God and evolution. It’s something I never really threw light on until I had to put it in the mouths and the heads of the various characters in this book. I understand why the debate exists, and why people get so exercised about it, but I hope that the resolution Mena comes to in the end is one that will be helpful to other people in sorting through the issue themselves. If not, then I hope I’ve at least added something useful to the dialogue. And given people a few laughs and a little romance to enjoy along the way.
		H.W. Brands H. W. Brands is a professor of history at Texas A&M University in Bryan, Texas. He is the author of T.R., the critically acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s,. He lives in Austin, Texas.
		Ann Brashares “I don’t really write with the idea of trying to teach any lessons. I want to tell a story as truthfully and engagingly as I can, and then let the chips fall where they may.”—Ann Brashares Ann Brashares grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with three brothers and attended a Quaker school in the D.C. area called Sidwell Friends. She studied Philosophy at Barnard College, part of Columbia University in New York City. Expecting to continue studying philosophy in graduate school, Ann took a year off after college to work as an editor, hoping to save money for school. Loving her job, she never went to graduate school, and instead, remained in New York City and worked as an editor for many years. Ann made the transition from editor to full-time writer to write her first novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. ABOUT THE AUTHOR ANN BRASHARES ON THE SECOND SUMMER OF THE SISTERHOOD The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, your debut novel, received much critical praise, awards, and adoration from readers of all ages. What are your thoughts on its success and why do you think it resonated so heavily with readers? Its success has been a wonderful surprise each step of the way. From the outset I tried to keep my expectations very low. I know how hard it is to get a book published let alone have it succeed. I’ve read many excellent books that did not succeed commercially. Here I give credit to the publisher, Random House, and to the booksellers. They supported the book wholeheartedly. To the extent that it has resonated with readers, I am grateful for it. I sense that they have responded, more than anything else, to the unconditional love and loyalty that the Sisterhood represents. Has the success changed your writing process and expectations for the The Second Summer of the Sisterhood? I tried not to let the success change anything, but it kept creeping into my consciousness anyway. I worried that I wouldn’t live up to the hopes of my readers. I worried that I would forget how to write. I worried that I never knew how to write in the first place. I worried a lot and I wrote very little. When I finally forced myself back to my computer, I worried I had fallen out of touch with my characters. They felt to me like friends with whom I'd been intensely close, but hadn't seen in a long time. It's painful, in a way, to have to ask clunky, anonymous questions of people you used to know in an intimate, hour-by-hour way. Luckily, though, when I started to spend real time with Carmen and Bee and Tibby and Lena, I relaxed. I grew close to them again and enjoyed being with them so much, I forgot all the things I was worrying about. As for expectations, I still try to keep them in check. But I do allow myself to hope. I hope that readers who liked the first book will like the second one, too. Did you plan for the girls’ relationships with their mothers to play a stronger role in The Second Summer of the Sisterhood? Does your relationship with your own mother resemble any from the book? It didn’t start out that way exactly. As I was working out stories for each of the girls, I realized that most of them involved their mothers to some degree. So I just went with it. The mother-daughter bond is about as rich a subject as any I know. And I felt those relationships could give a center of gravity to a book that otherwise ran the risk of going in too many directions at once. My relationship with my mother doesn’t resemble any of the ones in the book precisely. There are some thematic similarities to Carmen, though, in that my parents were divorced and I had to come to terms with my mom having a romantic life of her own. As the mother of three young children, do you find that you relate more to the girls or their mothers? Even though I’m closer to the age of the mothers, I related more to the daughters. I think that’s because I wrote the book from the girls’ points of view. Although I tried really hard to imagine how the mothers would feel, I didn’t actually spend my days thinking their thoughts the way I do when I’m writing in a character’s point of view. Also, my daughter is not a teenager yet. When she gets to be a teenager, then I’ll really understand what those mothers go through. Female friendship remains a central theme in the second book, do you have your own Sisterhood? In your writing, you seem to have a real understanding of the importance of those bonds, how have you come to know that? I have a few very good old friends from childhood and some more recent friends whom I love dearly. But truthfully, I think the Sisterhood is more fantasy than reality for me. I grew up in a house full of boys (wonderful boys, I should mention), and always dreamed about sisters. Do you have a sense of where the girls will be “next summer”? How do you see their growth continuing? Next summer will be the girls’ last before they split up to go to college. That’s going to be a big deal for them. I suspect Tibby is going to fall in love for the first time. I have a feeling Bridget might encounter Eric, the soccer coach, again. I have a few other plans up my sleeve, but I think I better keep them secret. What do you hope readers will take away from this second book? I don’t really write with the idea of trying to teach any lessons. I want to tell a story as truthfully and engagingly as I can, and then let the chips fall where they may. But I realize when I get to the end of the story, I care very much that my characters evolve and grow. In spite of their torments and their selfish impulses, I care that they are guided by a spirit of goodness. I want them to set a high standard for compassion and for friendship. ANN BRASHARES ON THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS How did you come up with the book’s unique central concept? Why traveling pants? The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was born in an unusual way. I was working as an editor at the time, chatting in the office with a colleague and friend who told me about a summer when she and some girl friends shared a pair of pants. She told me the pants had sadly been lost in Borneo. My mind was immediately filled with all sorts of wonderful possibilities. I think pants have unique qualities, especially in a woman’s life. Whatever bodily insecurities we have, we seem to take out on our pants. In high school, my friends would have their skinny pants and their fat pants. I like pants that allow women not to judge their bodies. The Traveling Pants are the kind of pants that always love you. They fit my characters’ bodies in a non-restrictive way. Describe your favorite pair of pants. What makes them your favorite? At the moment, my favorite pair of pants are bright red. They are cropped, slightly flared summer pants. Like a good friend, they are flexible, forgiving, and boost my confidence even on really off days. They are low maintenance pants–never requiring dry cleaning or even ironing. The waistline is zippered and definite, so it doesn't have that subtly defeated quality of elastic. And these pants manage to make me feel loved even through major body transitions (like having a baby!). This story should resonate with young women because sharing clothes is such an integral part of many female friendships. Did you have a clothes-sharing experience that helped to shape the book? The concept of The Pants is directly related to my experience with my wedding dress. Before I had chosen a wedding dress, I had a picture in my mind of what mine would look like. One day, my mom and I were touring wedding venues in the Washington, DC area where I grew up. Our guide showed us some wedding photographs, and one of them showed a bride wearing a dress just like the one I had imagined. The tour guide invited me to take the picture home, so I did, and I left it in my drawer. A few months later, the sister of a friend, a young woman named Hope, asked if I had picked my wedding dress. I hadn't. Hope’s recent wedding hadn’t worked out. She wasn't broken-hearted about the groom, but she was broken-hearted about her beautiful, amazing dress not being worn. She asked me if I would consider wearing it at my wedding. I didn't know Hope very well, so I politely declined a few times. Yet she was strangely insistent and later arrived at our friend's apartment with a huge box. Through the clear plastic front I could see that the dress inside was remarkably familiar. It was exactly the same as the dress in the photograph I had put in my drawer. I was ecstatic. I tried to give the dress back to Hope, after I had worn it in my wedding, but she didn't want it. So I decided, in the spirit of her generosity, that it was a fortuitous, serendipitous kind of dress, and needed to be shared some more. Since then, it has been worn beautifully by my older brother's wife, my middle brother's wife, and my lifelong best friend. These are probably the three women I am closest to in my life–my own sisterhood. I'm hoping it will be worn again. In fact, I am imagining that instead of the next bride throwing the bouquet at the end of the wedding, she can ball up my wedding dress and throw that. Much of the novel takes place in Baja and Greece. Did travel play an influential role in your childhood or teenage years? I love to travel and have taken a lot of trips, but have never actually been to either Baja or Greece. I did a lot of reading and imagining for those stories. They existed more in my imagination than any place else. I love islands. I loved that Oia, the town where Lena’s grandparents lived, was stuck in time and had this geological drama in the background. I grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, which was very Plain Jane. When I was a kid, I had a scrapbook that I used to write letters in from places I wished I could have gone. I would imagine being in Argentina and then write about all the incredible things I was seeing there. This book is almost like a continuation of those imaginary years. How old were you when you first fell in love? Who was he? Where were you? I first fell in love when I was 14 or 15, but it wasn’t immediate falling in love, it was a slow… slow fall. The person I fell in love with immediately was my husband. He is an artist and we met during my freshman year at Barnard. He sat across from me and drew a picture of me in the Columbia University Philosophy Reading Room. I hadn’t even noticed him, but a friend of mine saw what he was doing and told me. As soon as I went out with him, that was it. It was the first time I felt like I loved someone instantly. We’ve been together ever since. You’ve written about four very different girls. Are the characters in this book based on people you know or wish you had known? Oddly enough, they aren’t. They are composites of different people. I based Lena's story on the Greek myth of Artemis, the proud, boy-hating goddess of the hunt who, when spotted bathing by a suitor, turns the poor guy into a stag. I wanted my Lena to be less pleased with herself, though, and for her suitor to be more formidable. The story of Tibby and Bailey I based on the great, great movie It's a Wonderful Life. Bailey started out more like an angel than a person. I imagined her as an angel who revealed the cynical little prejudices and presumptions that I remember finding so seductive when I was fifteen. Carmen was the girl who said things I could never say and Bridget was the girl who did things I would never do. Who are you most like: Carmen, Tibby, Bridget or Lena? There’s a little bit of me in each of them. I would say I have more in common with Lena and Carmen than the other two. I have some life experience in common with Carmen, but we are considerably different too. I am a little like Carmen in that I sometimes feel as if I lose myself when I'm out of context. Also, I have dealt with issues of divorce and step families. For the protection of the innocent, though, I must say that my own family circumstances were completely different than hers. As for Lena, I guess I know what it is to feel awkward and inward sometimes, and romantically, to feel like a big chicken. Sometimes the girls provided me with an escape or a fantasy. Why did you choose Carmen to set up the story? Carmen struck me as the person who was most conscious–who recognized the importance of the girls’ friendship. She didn’t just live it, she knew it inside and out. I think she’s the most introspective of the four. What do you think are the most important aspects of female relationships? Loyalty and love. And I mean the kind of love that parents have–unconditional. So often, relationships become competitive or marked by pettiness or envy. For relationships to really transcend the negative stuff in life, they need to be without judgement. I wanted to create a story about a rare bunch of girls who didn't succumb to malice or jealousy and, instead, learned to grow alongside each other and in support of each other. I like the idea in this book, particularly for Carmen, that they are just going to love each other whole-heartedly, no matter what. Do you think those things change as people get older? I think that relationships do change over time. And that’s another reason why Carmen has the role she does. She has an awareness that the relationship is fragile and that so many other priorities, like boyfriends or distance, can get in the way. People’s lives inevitably go in different directions as they get older, when they stop having so much in common. They have to work not to let it go. What do you hope teens will take away from reading The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? Honestly, I mostly hope they'll enjoy it and take pleasure away. I want it to be the kind of book that will stick with them a bit, the way books I liked when I was that age stuck with me. If there's a message, I guess it's just this: love yourself and your friends unconditionally.
		Libba Bray "I’m one of those people who has to