John Ray Grisham - an American novelist

John Ray Grisham was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, on February 8, 1955. The second-oldest of five siblings, he developed a love for books early on. Grisham and his family moved around for a while, due to job opportunities for his father, who worked in construction, eventually settling in Southaven, Mississippi.

He was educated at Southaven High School, DeSoto County, Mississippi (where he would later practice criminal and civil law for a decade), and continued on to earn a BS degree at Mississippi State University in 1977 and a JD degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981.

Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, he was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi, law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby—writing his first novel.

His first novel, A Time to Kill, was published modestly in 1988, but by the time his second novel, The Firm, was published it became the best-selling novel, of 1991 followed by another success, The Pelican Brief, in 1992.

He is not only an author but is also a well-known American lawyer and a politician. His books which are basically thrillers have achieved so much fame that they have been translated in to forty two languages.
John Ray Grisham - an American novelist