Jodi Picoult is an American author born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island; when she was 13 years old, her family moved to New Hampshire. Picoult wrote her first story at the age of 5, entitled The Lobster Which Misunderstood.

She graduated Princeton University in 1987. She published two short stories in Seventeen magazine while still in college. Immediately after graduation, she began a variety of jobs, ranging from editing textbooks to teaching eighth-grade English. She earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard University.

Picoult’s novels are primarily based around family, relationships, love and involves some sort of drama. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult’s first book to debut at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list was Nineteen Minutes, which is about the aftermath of a school shooting that happened in a small town. Her book, Change of Heart, was her second novel to debut at #1 on the NYT Best Seller list the next year.

One of her more well-known books is titled My Sister’s Keeper, which was made into a Feature film in 2009. Other novels that she has written that have become Lifetime Original Movies are The Pact, Plain Truth, The Tenth Circle, and Salem Falls. Picoult currently has some 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide. She currently lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with her husband, Timothy; their three children — Sammy, Kyle, and Jake; and a handful of pets.

Louis Dearborn L’Amour was an American author. His books consisted primarily of Western novels (though he called his work ‘Frontier Stories’), however he also wrote historical fiction (The Walking Drum), science fiction (The Haunted Mesa), nonfiction (Frontier), as well as poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into movies. L’Amour’s books remain popular and most have gone through multiple printings. At the time of his death some of his 105 existing works were in print (89 novels, 14 short-story collections, and two full-length works of nonfiction) and he was considered “one of the world’s most popular writers”.

Louis Dearborn LaMoore was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, in 1908, the seventh child of Dr. Louis Charles LaMoore and Emily Dearborn LaMoore. He was of French ancestry through his father and Irish through his mother. Dr. LaMoore was a large-animal veterinarian, local politician and farm-equipment broker who had arrived in Dakota Territory in 1882.

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