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Author Author Booklist

Books about writers

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

Mystery & Suspense

• About the Author
  Author: Colapinto, John
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060194170
  Booklist
  Cal Cunningham dreams of writing an autobiographical novel until his roommate beats him to the punch and pens a page-turning work based on Cal's life. When an accident removes the roommate from the scene, Cal appropriates the book and is propelled to success--until he discovers that someone knows his secret.
  Updated 5/17/01
• I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason: A Cece Caruso Mystery
  Author: Kandel, Susan
  Publisher: Morrow $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060581050 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Susan Kandel has written an adventurous, humorous debut novel that takes us on a well-researched romp through California's past and present, complete with turn-of-the-century robber barons and the haute couture of the '40s."--Barbara Seranella (Unpaid Dues and Unwilling Accomplice).
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 3.25.04
• The Whole Truth
  Author: Pickard, Nancy
  Publisher: Pocket $ 23 ISBN: 0671887955 Date: 2000
  PW
  When true-crime author Marie Lightfoot follows a twisted path that leads to a young victim's parents - and ultimately to the dark recesses of her own soul - she becomes a sitting duck for a killer who just might be smart enough to outwit her.
  
• Ring of Truth
  Author: Pickard, Nancy
  Publisher: Pocket $ 23.95 ISBN: 0671887971 Date: 2001
  PW
  From the award-winning author of The Whole Truth comes a chilling new story featuring her gutsy heroine, Marie Lightfoot. This time Lightfoot can't make the pieces of a Florida murder--involving a priest and his lover--fit together. And the missing piece could be fatal.
  Updated 6/4/01
• The Problem of the Missing Miss
  Author: Rogow, Roberta
  Publisher: St. Martin's List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312185537 Date: 1998
  PW Kirkus
  When the daughter of a lord is kidnapped, the unlikely pair of Charles (aka Lewis Carroll) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle join forces to save her. This first novel by a children's librarian makes wonderful use of the two 19th century British authors and gives us a good story enhanced by the quirky characters of the two famous literary men.
  From Murder at the Flatiron Building
  Suggested Reading: Debuts

• Oracle Night
  Author: Auster, Paul
  Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805073205 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, 34-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. For the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and puzzling events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.
  Suggested Reading: Books about Books
  Updated 10.8.03
• The Biographer's Tale
  Author: Byatt, A.S.
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375411143 Date: 2001
  Booklist
  From the award-winning author of Possession comes an ingenious new novel about love and literary sleuthing. Tantalizing, witty, and delightfully rueful, The Biographer's Tale is the story of a disenchanted postgraduate student who decides to study "the messiness of real life" by writing a biography of a great biographer.
  Updated 11/22/00
• Vanishing Point
  Author: Markson, David
  Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard $ 15 (paper) ISBN: 1593760108 Date: 2004
  Kirkus PW
  An elderly writer (identified only as "Author") sets out to transform shoe boxes crammed with notecards into a novel, and in so doing will dazzle readers with an astonishing parade of revelations about the trials and calamities and absurdities and often even tragedies of the creative life--all the while trying his best (he says) to keep himself out of the tale.
  Updated 1.26.04
• Starting Out in the Evening
  Author: Morton, Brian
  Publisher: Crown List Price: $ 25 ISBN: 0517708620 Date: 1998
  LJ PW
  NYTBR Notable List, PW Best Books List
  Leonard Schiller is a writer in his seventies whose lifetime of dedicated labor have brought few rewards when Heather Wolfe, a grad student, sets out to write her master's thesis on his work. Heather blows into Schiller's life like a whirlwind and suddenly everything is changed. Morton illuminates the inner lives of his characters as they strive to live out their ideals in a world that has little room for idealism. He brings us an unforgettable portrait of an artist and an old man in an intelligent, exhilarating and powerful novel. - Publisher Marketing.
  
• The Master
  Author: Toibin, Colm
  Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0743250400 Date: 2004
  Kirkus Booklist PW LJ
  "A deep, lovely, and enthralling book that engages with the disquiet and drama of a famous writing life: splendidly conceived and composed by a writer who is himself a master of his art."--Shirley Hazzard (The Great Fire).
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Biographical Fiction
  Updated 5.4.04