Book John Grisham

John Grisham is an American novelist and former lawyer who defined the modern legal thriller. A graduate of Mississippi State University, he earned his law degree from the University of Mississippi in 1981, spent a decade as a practicing attorney and, from 1983 to 1990, represented his district as a Democrat in the state legislature. His debut novel, A Time to Kill, came out in 1989 after four years of writing, and his breakout, The Firm (1991), turned him into a publishing phenomenon. A long string of number-one hits followed, including The Pelican Brief (1992), The Client (1993), The Rainmaker (1995) and The Broker (2005), with his books selling hundreds of millions of copies around the world. Hollywood has adapted many of them, among them The Firm (1993), The Pelican Brief (1993), The Client (1994), A Time to Kill (1996), The Chamber (1996) and The Rainmaker (1997), plus The Runaway Jury, A Painted House and Skipping Christmas. Grisham received the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2009 and the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in 2011 and 2014. He is a gracious, plainspoken speaker on storytelling, justice and the writing life.