Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Alan Bradley was born in Toronto, Ont. and grew up in the pleasant lakeside town of Cobourg, Ont. After a long career in television broadcasting, he took early retirement from the University of Saskatchewan to write full-time. He has published many children's stories as well as lifestyle and arts columns in Canadian newspapers. His adult stories have been broadcast on CBC radio and published in various literary journals. He has also written several screenplays and taught university-level courses in screenwriting. He was the recipient of the first Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children's Literature. After writing for several years on the Maltese island of Gozo, Alan Bradley now lives on the Isle of Man.
The first book of his Flavia de Luce series, "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" won the 2007 Debut Dagger Award of the Crime Writers Association in the UK; the 2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel; the 2010 Dilys, awarded by the International Mystery Booksellers Association; the Spotted Owl Award, given by the Friends of Mystery, and the 2010 Arthur Ellis Award, given by the Crime Writers of Canada for Best First Novel. "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" has also been nominated for an Anthony Award, a Barry Award, and a Macavity Award. Besides appearing on the New York Times bestsellers list as a Favorite Mystery of 2009, "Sweetness" was also, among other honours, an American Library Association nominee as Best Book For Young Adults; a Barnes and Noble Bestseller, and was named to the 2009 Bloomer List. The audiobook version of "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" was voted Best AudioBook by iTunes.
All Flavia de Luce books published to date have been New York Times bestsellers, and are presently published in thirty-nine countries and thirty-six languages and the series has been optioned for television by the Academy Award-winning producer/director Sam Mendes, of "Skyfall" and "American Beauty" fame.
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With the publication of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, you've
become a 70-year-old-first time novelist. Have you always had a passion for
writing—or is it more of a recent development?
Well, the Roman author Seneca once said something like this: "Hang on to
your youthful enthusiasms – you'll be able to use them better when you're
older." So to put it briefly, I'm taking his advice.
I actually spent most of my life working on the technical side of television
production, but would like to think that I've always been a writer. I started
writing a novel at age five, and have written articles for various publications
all my life. It wasn't until my early retirement, though, that I started writing
books. I published my memoir, The Shoebox Bible, in 2004, and then
started working on a mystery about a reporter in England. It was during the
writing of this story that I stumbled across Flavia de Luce, the main character
in Sweetness.
Flavia certainly is an interesting character. How did you come up with such a
forceful, precocious and entertaining personality?
Flavia walked onto the page of another book I was writing, and simply hijacked
the story. I was actually well ...
Tiffany Baker’s Recipe For A Writing Life
A handful of islands: Belvedere , Aquidneck, Balboa, Manhattan, Corsica, Maui, the UK
Three small children: Two girls and a boy, plump in the cheeks and knees. Strong-willed ...
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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
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by Tiffany Baker
Rachel DeWoskin's fourth book, the critically acclaimed novel, Blind, was published in August, 2014. Her most recent novel, Big Girl Small, (FSG 2011) received the 2012 American Library Association's Alex Award and ... (more)
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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Try:
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