Wordcandy Authors

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May 26 2006

James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell had an impressively poisonous pen. His eighth and most famous novel, 1919’s satirical fantasy Jurgen, earned him a brief period in the literary spotlight when the New York Soc...

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Aug 11 2004

Meg Cabot

The majority of Meg Cabot's books are pure Wordcandy. When she is at her best (the Princess Diaries series, contemporary romances like She Went All the Way and The Boy Next Door, the 1-800-WHERE-...

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Jan 28 2006

James M. Cain

Most people don’t realize that James M. Cain, the taciturn, womanizing author of such hardboiled pulp classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, originally trained to become ...

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Feb 28 2005

Eleanor Cameron

Born in 1912, writer and critic Eleanor Cameron is best remembered as the author of the charmingly bizarre Mushroom Planet books. The first book in this imaginative, entertaining series, 1954’s T...

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Jan 7 2005

Truman Capote

Truman Capote was a high school dropout-turned-journalist-turned-novelist-turned-socialite who achieved tremendous success at a remarkably young age, produced one of the most iconic novellas of th...

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Jan 24 2005

Mike Carey

Mike Carey is the author of a four-issue comic book miniseries from Vertigo entitled My Faith in Frankie. While this book won’t be the title that converts the English-speaking world into comic b...

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Jan 19 2010

Isobelle Carmody

Isobelle Carmody is the Australian author of both the Obernewtyn Chronicles (the first book of which is one of our Featured Titles) and Alyzon Whitestarr, an excellent standalone young adult fanta...

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Aug 11 2004

Lewis Carroll

Like Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll's books are too-often critiqued in the context of his private life. Highly intelligent, talented, and socially ambitious, Carroll's romantic inclinations were ...

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Aug 14 2004

Sarah Caudwell

I have no idea who makes this kind of decision, but whoever decided that the late, great Edward Gorey should provide the cover art for Sarah Caudwell's books was an absolute genius. Their styles ...

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Aug 14 2004

Michael Chabon

While all of Chabon's books are excellent, two in particular are Wordcandy. His young adult book Summerland is a gorgeously written novel that does for American mythology what Susan Cooper and Ll...

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Nov 13 2004

Raymond Chandler

Compared with fellow Black Mask writers Cornell Woolrich and Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler was a man with a successful career, a working set of social skills, and a downright chatty (one migh...

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Mar 21 2006

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is one of the most famous pieces of writing in the English language. It is an unfinished novel in verse—Chaucer got down about 17,000 lines before his death in...

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Jun 24 2005

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the world's most famous mystery writer. She's right up there with the Bible and Shakespeare in terms of sales, you can find her books in 45 different languages, and her most fa...

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May 14 2006

John Christopher

John Christopher (real name: Samuel Youd) is an English science fiction writer. Mr. Christopher has written more than 70 novels under a variety of pen names, but he is best known as the author of...

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Aug 14 2004

Catherine Clark

I know very little about this woman. She lives in Minneapolis, and she has a very pretty website. Her books Truth or Dairy and Wurst Case Scenario are fun stuff--the rambling journals of a self-...

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Aug 19 2004

Susanna Clarke

Englishwoman Susanna Clarke is the author of the almost universally praised novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (the subject of one of our Book of the Week reviews) as well as a handful of shor...

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Mar 29 2005

Beverly Cleary

I love Beverly Cleary's books. Mostly because they're awesome, of course, but also because Ramona, Beezus, Ellen, Henry Huggins, and all their friends live in the same neighborhood that my late, ...

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Oct 12 2009

Rosemary Clement-Moore

Rosemary Clement-Moore is the author of the excellent YA novel The Splendor Falls (which we loved, and chose as one of our Featured Book titles), and the Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil series (which ...

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Aug 25 2005

Andrew Clements

Andrew Clements has written a series of pleasantly earnest, thoughtful children’s books, including the excellent YA sci-fi/fantasy Things Not Seen. Clements spent several years as a teacher, and ...

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Aug 14 2004

Colette

Both Colette’s life story and the vast majority of her books read like a really far-fetched story arc on Sex and the City… if SATC was set in turn-of-the-previous-century Paris. While Colette is ...

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Aug 14 2004

Eoin Colfer

Eoin Colfer is one of the many, many fine authors to have been relegated to the "If you loved the Harry Potter books, try ___" list, which always irritates me because it seems like so many o...

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Jan 24 2005

Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was a close friend of Charles Dickens, and his books, while less famous, share many of Dickens’s strengths. (Collins was also less of a tool on the personality front, apparently.) ...

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Apr 11 2006

Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins is the author of the critically acclaimed Underland Chronicles. Collins’s series is an Alice-in-Wonderland-on-crack story about an eleven year old boy named Gregor who tumbles thr...

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Jan 11 2006

Jennifer Colt

Jennifer Colt

Jennifer Colt is the author of The Butcher of Beverly Hills, an action-packed story about two redheaded twin sisters (one an uptight university grad, the other a lesbian ex-con with a wickedly ben...

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Apr 2 2006

Glen Cook

Missouri author Glenn Cook is the author of several very respectable contemporary fantasy novels, including the 'Black Company' books, the 'Starfishers' books, and the 'Dark War' trilogy, as well ...

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Aug 14 2004

Susan Cooper

My little brother is incapable of reading Susan Cooper’s two-time Newbury Award-winning The Dark Is Rising series without giving this whiny speech about how none of the books’ suspense actually wo...

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Mar 20 2010

Michelle Cooper

Australian author Michelle Cooper is a speech and language pathologist who specializes in learning disabilities and reluctant readers. Her novel A Brief History of Montmaray is one of our Feature...

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Jul 27 2008

Tom Corwin

Tom Corwin—along with illustrator Craig Fraizer—is the creator of Mr. Fooster Traveling on a Whim, one of our Wordcandy Featured Books. Mr. Corwin is also a musician, and the author of Mostly Bob...

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Mar 4 2007

Robert Crais

California-based suspense novelist Robert Crais is best known as the author of the Elvis Cole detective series, featuring the wisecracking title character and his enigmatic, heavily armed partner,...

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Aug 14 2004

Jennifer Crusie

Jennifer Crusie ties with Lisa Kleypas for the number one spot on my “Best Romance Novelists Currently Writing” list. While the two authors may seem to have little in common (Crusie writes sharp,...

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Aug 14 2004

Chris Crutcher

If Chris Crutcher wrote for adults rather than kids and was about fifty times less entertaining, I bet the people from Oprah's Book Club would be knocking his door down. Crutcher's books feature ...

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Nov 12 2008

Melissa de la Cruz

Melissa de la Cruz is the author of several YA series about the lives of rich, snotty, self-indulgent teens. Normally, this style of book leaves us cold... but then she went ahead wrote a series ...

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