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The following biography
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Free Encyclopedia.”
John Grisham, Jonathan Bommes (born
February 8, 1955) is a retired attorney, American novelist and author
best known for his works of modern legal drama.
****
Biography and career
The second eldest of five siblings was born
1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas to Southern Baptist parents of modest means.
His father worked as a construction worker and a cotton farmer. After
moving frequently, the family settled in 1967 in the small town of
Southaven in De Soto County, Mississippi. Encouraged by his mother,
young Grisham was an avid reader who was especially influenced by the
work of John Steinbeck whose clarity he admired. In 1977, Grisham
received a B.Sc. degree in accounting from Mississippi State University.
While studying at MSU, the author began keeping a journal, a practice
that would later assist in his creative endeavors. After earning his
J.D. degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981, he
went on to practice small-town general law for nearly a decade in
Southaven, where he became bored with criminal law and successful at
civil law.
In 1983, he was elected to the Mississippi
House of Representatives, serving until 1990.
In 1984 at the De Soto County courthouse in
Hernando, Grisham witnessed the harrowing testimony of a 12 year old
rape victim. In his spare time and as a hobby, Grisham began work on his
first novel, which explored what would have happened if the girl's
father had murdered her assailants. He spent three years on A Time to
Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, it
was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, which gave it a modest
5,000-copy printing and published it in June 1988.
The day after Grisham completed A Time to
Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a young attorney
lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared.
That second novel, The Firm, became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Grisham went on to produce at least one work a year, most of them widely
popular bestsellers. Beginning with A Painted House in 2001 the author
changed his focus from the law to the more general rural south. He also
continues to maintain his legal thrillers.
Publishers Weekly declared Grisham "the
bestselling novelist of the 90s." During the 90s, he sold a total of
60,742,288 copies. He is also one of only two authors to sell two
million copies on a first printing. His 1992 novel The Pelican Brief,
sold 11,232,480 in the United States alone; making it the bestselling
novel of the decade, and the only novel to sell ten million copies or
more during the decade.
In 1996, Grisham briefly returned to the
practice of law when he successfully represented the family of a man
killed in a railroad accident.
The Mississippi State University Libraries,
Manuscript Division, maintains the "John Grisham Papers," an archive
containing materials generated during the author's tenure as Mississippi
State Representative and relating to his writings.
Grisham's lifelong passion for baseball is
evident in his novel, A Painted House and in his support of Little
League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi and Charlottesville,
Virginia. He has also performed mission service for his church, notably
in Brazil. Grisham describes himself as a "moderate Baptist." He lives
with his wife Renee, (née Jones) and their two children, Ty and Shea.
The family splits their time between their Victorian home on a farm
outside Oxford and a plantation near Charlottesville.
Bibliography
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details
follow.
Novels
A Time to Kill (1989)
A man kills two drunken rednecks, after
they rape his daughter.
The Firm (1991)
Mitch McDeere gets a job at a new firm,
then he discovers that the firm is listening in on his phone calls and
the FBI want to talk to him.
The Pelican Brief (1992)
Darby Shaw tries to solve the mystery of
the death of a liberal supreme court jutice, and a conservative supreme
court justice.
The Client (1993)
Eleven year old Mark Sway knows who killed
a US Senator, but is afraid the killers will kill him.
The Chamber (1994)
Adam Hall tries to argue a stay for his
grandfather, who bombed a jewish lawyer's office.
The Rainmaker (1995)
Rudy Baylor takes on a case against an
insurance company who refused to save a man's life. The only problem is
Rudy Baylor has no experience.
The Runaway Jury (1996)
Defense attorney, Rankin Fitch tries to
manipulate the jury verdict, of a case against a large tobacco company.
The Partner (1997)
A partner in a law firm fakes his death to
steal $90 million. Afterwards, he flees to Brazil.
The Street Lawyer (1998)
Michael Brock defends the homeless.
The Testament (1999)
A billionaire business man leaves every one
out of his will except his mysterious illegitmate daughter.
The Brethren (2000)
Three ex-judges in jail are involved in a
mail scam that gets big, fast.
A Painted House (2001)
A story inspired by John Grisham's own
life, the character keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but
will change his life forever.
Skipping Christmas (2001)
Imagine a year without Christmas, that is
what the Kranks have in mind. The movie "Christmas With the Kranks" was
inspired by this book.
The Summons (2002)
A Dying judge sends a summons to his to
sons one finds his fathers hidden fortune and trouble when he arrives to
late.
The King of Torts (2003)
J. Clay Carter a DC legal aid lawyer
accepts a case that takes him into the strange world of a drug company.
He becomes rich and gets all the problems that come with it.
Bleachers (2003)
Men in a small southern town return to the
heights of their glory to wait until their high school football coach
dies.
The Last Juror (2004)
In the early 1970's, just out of college,
Willie Traynor buys a weekly paper in Ford County. His life gets
entangled with the biggest court case of its time in the area and with
the people that it effects the most.
The Broker (2005)
A former lobbyist, with secrets that are
worth killing him to get, is released from prison in order to find out
what country wants to kill him
****
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Date Article Copied:
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