The Works of John Grisham

John Grisham was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas on February 8, 1955. His parents were a construction worker and a homemaker. As a child, John Grisham dreamed of one day becoming a professional baseball player. In 1967, his family moved to the town of Southaven, Mississippi. Ten years later he received an undergraduate degree in accounting from Mississippi State University. In 1981, he received a law degree from Ole Miss. That same year, he married Renee Jones. He also started a law practice in Southaven, where he practiced both criminal and civil law. Two years later, Grisham was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives where he served until 1990. During his seven year span, he one day overheard the testimony of a 12 year old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the father had murdered his daughter's rapists. Grisham spent five years of getting up a 5 a.m. to finish this novel, entitled A Time to Kill. Initially, the story was rejected by many publishers, but was bought by Wynwood Press and given a modest printing in 1988. Before A Time to Kill was published, Grisham had already begun work on The Firm, which was bought by Paramount Pictures for $600,000. The Firm spent 47 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was the best-selling novel of 1991. Grisham has continued to write one novel per year since A Time to Kill. Grisham now resides in Oxford, Mississippi and Charlottesville, Virginia.

John Grisham writes a very distinctive style of mystery. Grisham started out as a lawyer, so he generally writes mysteries that pertain very much to law and government. This type of mystery is commonly known as the legal thriller. He gives you just enough information to keep you guessing, but not enough to give away the ending. Although, Grisham has written one novel that has absolutely nothing to do with law, lawyers, or courtrooms.

To date, John Grisham has written twelve novels. They are A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, and A Painted House. There have also been several media adaptations to Grisham's novels. They include:

- The Firm. Dir. Sydney Pollack. Paramount Pictures, 1993. Based...

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... September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with two weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist- high to my father, almost over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a "good crop." Thus begins a story inspired by life in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it. For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever. A Painted House is a moving story of one boy's journey from innocence to experience.

- Oxford, Mississippi: The Oxford American (2000)

- New York: Doubleday, 2001