Where is john grisham the author from

Camino Island. The Whistler. Ford County: Stories. The Innocent Man. The Client. A Time to Kill. The Pelican Brief. Maybe I just don't think reading a book should actually be hard work. In his late teens Grisham took on a string of dead-end jobs before embarking on a series of unfinished college courses.

It wasn't until that he graduated with a law degree and set up shop as a criminal and personal injury lawyer in Southaven, Mississippi. In The Litigators there is an idealistic speech about the value of working with "real people with real problems who need help.

That's the beauty of street law. You meet the clients face to face, you get to know them and, if things work out, you get to help them". It comes straight from Grisham's own experience — the philosophy of his law practice mirrored his politics. Directly across the street from my office were insurance companies, banks and big corporations. It was a very clear line between us, and I learned very quickly who my friends were. That's when I became a Democratic activist and eventually ran for office.

I was very naive, homesick for my young wife and baby and distracted. Ultimately my heart just wasn't in it. The spark for his first book, A Time to Kill , came from a court case when Grisham observed a year-old girl give evidence of her rape.

Looking at the girl's father, he imagined what would happen if he took matters into his own hands and how the law and society would respond. That was pretty much my dream at the time. My ambitions were still legal, not literary. He took three years to write A Time to Kill and it was two more years before it received its low-key publication. By this time he had also broken the back of The Firm , which was published in March It is something you just can't prepare for.

When it hit the New York Times bestseller list at number 12 I clipped the list from the paper and stuck it to my office wall. I did the same thing for the next 44 weeks. It was while on an early book tour that Grisham received his most useful piece of career advice. I heard that loud and clear. At the time I was about halfway through The Pelican Brief and had no idea when it would be finished or published. But I went home, locked myself away for 60 days and finished the book.

It was published a year after The Firm. One year after that I published The Client. Those three books had an enormous impact on everything that followed.

A Time to Kill was reissued and now, after all these years, is probably my bestselling book. I didn't plan any of that. And while books came out in rapid succession so did the film versions. Throughout the 90s Grisham and Michael Crichton regularly exchanged the record for the most lucrative deals.

It was a ping-pong match. I was told that Crichton's agent started asking for the X million Grisham got plus a dollar. And these were cash deals, not options. Money on the table. And everyone involved made money. Now I can barely give film rights away. The business has completely changed and TV has become far more fun and creative. But however his work is consumed, it remains a highly lucrative operation.

He says he and his wife have worked hard to keep their lives as quiet as possible. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5, copy printing and published it in June That might have put an end to Grisham's hobby. However, he had already begun his next book, and it would quickly turn that hobby into a new full-time career and spark one of publishing's greatest success stories.

This time around, it was a bestseller. There are currently over million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 40 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films, as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. Grisham lives with his wife Renee and their two children, Ty and Shea. The family splits their time between their Victorian home on a farm in Mississippi and a plantation near Charlottesville, VA.

Grisham took time off from writing for several months in to return, after a five-year hiatus, to the courtroom. He was honoring a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a full-time writer: representing the family of a railroad brakeman killed when he was pinned between two cars. When he's not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.

He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over kids on 26 Little League teams. Lacy Stoltz meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases.

But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims. He is the most cunning of all serial killers. He knows forensics, police procedure and, most important, the law. He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way.

How can Lacy pursue him without becoming the next name on his list? Clanton, Mississippi. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

His fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security and the safety of his family on the line.

In the summer of his 17th year, Samuel Sooleymon gets the chance of a lifetime: a trip to the United States with his South Sudanese teammates to play in a showcase basketball tournament.

However, a civil war is raging across South Sudan; while he is away, rebel troops ransack his village. His father is dead, his sister is missing, and his mother and two younger brothers are in a refugee camp. Partly out of sympathy, the coach of North Carolina Central offers him a scholarship. He moves to Durham, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season.

But Samuel has something no other player has: a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America.

Who would want Nelson dead? In the small Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night. The killer left no clues. Quincy was tried, convicted and sent to prison for life.

For 22 years he languished in prison, maintaining his innocence. But no one was listening. In desperation, he writes a letter to Guardian Ministries, a small nonprofit run by Cullen Post, a lawyer who is also an Episcopal minister. Powerful, ruthless people murdered Keith, and they do not want Quincy exonerated. They killed one lawyer 22 years ago, and they will kill another without a second thought. Then, one cool October morning, he rose early, drove into town, walked into the church, and calmly shot and killed his pastor and friend, the Reverend Dexter Bell.

Mark, Todd and Zola came to law school to change the world, to make it a better place. But now, as third-year students, these close friends realize they have been duped. They all borrowed heavily to attend a third-tier, for-profit law school so mediocre that its graduates rarely pass the bar exam, let alone get good jobs.

And when they learn that their school is one of a chain owned by a shady New York hedge-fund operator who also happens to own a bank specializing in student loans, the three know they have been caught up in The Great Law School Scam.