There are many quotes, often by famous people, about reading. But here’s one that succinctly articulates the benefits of reading.

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Louis Begley was born in Poland in 1933. He and his parents survived the Holocaust, and he came to the U.S. at 13 years of age. He attended Harvard College, graduating summa cum laude. He then entered the U.S. Army. In 1959, after graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, he became an attorney in a prestigious law firm, where for many years, he headed its international practice.

When he was 58 years old and still practicing law, Wartime Lies, his first novel, was published. Based on his childhood as a Polish Jew who escaped the Nazi death camps, it won the Hemingway/PEN Award in 1991, and the Irish Times Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize. His 1996 novel, About Schmidt was made into a film starring Jack Nicholson.

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Harlan Coben is known to readers everywhere. His first novel was published when he was twenty-six, and after two stand-alone thrillers, Play Dead in 1990 and Miracle Cure in 1991, he began writing the popular Myron Bolitar series. His 2001 standalone novel, Tell No One, was hugely popular. In 2006, Film director Guillaume Canet made the book into the French thriller, Ne le dis a personne. The movie was the top box office foreign-language film of the year in the U.S.; won the Lumiere (French Golden Globe) for best picture; and was nominated for nine Cesars (French Oscar), winning four awards.

Harlan Coben has gone on to write eleven more standalone novels. His books regularly appear on the New York Times bestseller list, and more than 60 million have been sold internationally. He was the first writer to receive the Edgar, Shamus and Anthony Awards.

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Owen Laukkanen’s debut novel, The Professionals, received high praise and was nominated for many honors, including the International Thriller Writers’ Award, the Anthony, the Barry, and the New Voices Awards. He graduated from the University of British Columbia’s creative writing program, and before turning to fiction, spent three years reporting on the world of professional poker.

The Stolen Ones is the fourth novel in the series featuring Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere, partners in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension-FBI Joint Task Force. The novel begins with Irina and Catalina, two Romanian sisters, who are kidnapped and brought to the U.S. in shipping containers, along with other young women, to be sold as sex slaves. Soon, Stevens and Windermere are on the trail of a massive international kidnapping and prostitution ring. The story takes them over much of the country as they struggle to track down the most ruthless criminals they’ve ever encountered.

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Dennis Palumbo is a thriller writer and psychotherapist in private practice. He’s the author of the non-fiction book, Writing from the Inside Out and a collection of mystery stories, From Crime to Crime. He has also been writing the Daniel Rinaldi mystery series. He was formerly a Hollywood screenwriter, whose credits include the film My Favorite Year, which was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay. He was a staff writer for the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter. Currently, he blogs for the Huffington Post and has a column, Hollywood on the Couch, for Psychology Today.

His mystery-thriller series concerns Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma
expert, who consults with the Pittsburg Police. His specialty is treating victims of violent crime who suffer from the traumatic after-effects of those experiences. Rinaldi suffered such a trauma when his wife was killed during a mugging. Though he too was shot, he lived, but struggled with survivor’s guilt long afterwards. Now, his mission is to help others deal with their trauma symptoms, but in the process, he manages to get heavily involved in police investigations, often to the consternation of his police colleagues.

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With his books published in more than 40 languages, James Rollins is known to millions of readers. A true Renaissance man, he’s much more than an author of explosive thrillers. He’s a veterinarian, man of science, and the author of bestselling novels evocative of the works of Michael Crichton and Isaac Asimov. His novels are rich with history, scientific fact, ecologic perils, and threats of global destruction, woven tightly with fantasy and suspense. His thrillers transcend all genres.

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Michael Sears’s financial thriller, Black Fridays was an award-winning debut novel. It was followed by Mortal Bonds, the second in the Jason Stafford series.

Before turning to fiction, Michael was a Wall Street veteran and managing director at two major brokerage firms. With his extensive and intimate knowledge of the sometimes mystifying world of finance and Wall Street intrigue, he has written the highly successful Jason Stafford series of thrillers.

In Long Way Down, the third in the series, Jason has spent time in prison for financial crimes. Working as an undercover troubleshooter for a private investment bank, he is assigned the task of getting to the bottom of insider trading allegations against a bioengineer and corporate honcho, Philip Haley, who insists he’s innocent of any misdeeds. Believing Haley has been set up, Jason goes about trying to uncover the truth. And, the truth can be dangerous—even life-threatening.

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W.E.B. Griffin writes military and detective fiction and has more than 40 novels published under that name. He has published 200 books under 13 different pseudonyms.

He joined the U.S. Army in 1946 and was involved in counter-intelligence. After his army service, he began college, but his studies were cut short in 1951 when he was recalled to serve in the Korean War as a correspondent. At the end of the war, he continued working for the military in a civilian capacity. After his first three novels proved successful, he began writing full-time. In recent years, his son William E. Butterworth IV, previously editor of Boy’s Life, has co-authored the books.

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Brad Taylor spent more than 21 years in the U.S. Army Special Forces, including 8 years in the 1^st Special Forces Operational Detachment, commonly known as Delta Force. His last assignment was teaching at the Citadel.

His seventh military thriller, No Fortunate Son features protagonists Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill, members of a top secret extralegal unit known as The Taskforce, created to contain terrorist plots and global threats. TaskForce members have been mobilized because relatives of key members of the U.S. government, including the Vice President’s son, have been kidnapped. The U.S. must face a terrible choice: stop counterterrorist operations or watch their loved ones die.

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Under seven different pseudonyms, Jayne Ann Krentz has written more than 120 romance novels. Many have been bestsellers. Now, she uses only three names: Jayne Ann Krentz when writing contemporary romantic-suspense; Amanda Quick for historical romance-suspense; and Jayne Castle when penning paranormal romance-suspense.

Trust No One, a contemporary romance-suspense novel, features Grace Elland, a creative marketing assistant to a Seattle-based motivational guru. Grace discovers her boss’s body, and after reporting it to the police, begins receiving cryptic and vaguely threatening emails. Strangely, they come from her dead boss’s computer. To make matters worse, when she was a teen-ager, Grace also found a dead body, an event that left her with night terrors and panic attacks. Even worse, it appears someone is trying to frame Grace for her employer’s murder.

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