Who is John Grisham, and what are his books in chronological order ?

He was born to a cotton farmer on February the 8^th, 1955. His parents lived and brought him up in Arkansas in Jonesboro. Just like most of us, Grisham had a childhood dream- his was to be a big time baseball player-and yes, just like most of us, his childhood dreams never saw the light of day. (But in a twist of fate, he still lives that dream in a couple of his books when he creates characters in some of books like “the innocent man” and “The painted house” that love and excel in the game.)

John Grisham is an old boy of Mississippi state university and as you would have guessed, he graduated with a degree in law. That was in 1981. The same year, he married Renee and they were blessed with two children whom they named Ty and Shea. Grisham was an attorney for a record ten years and his specialty was criminal and civil law. This must have been the foundation for his literary works.

Grisham’s first novel, a time to kill, took him three years to write. (So be encouraged, your manuscript could be taking some time to complete but who knows what could emerge three years down the line?). The book was published in 1989. Following the success of his first book, John got a job as a publisher of a magazine in 1994. The magazine was called "The Oxford American." When he took the job, the magazine was almost collapsing and was struggling financially but Grisham managed to resuscitate it. His second book to write, which ironically was also my second of Grisham novels to read, (my first was the client) got attention of movie producers. Paramount managed to buy movie rights from him and that was the time John Grisham quit his other professional commitments and became a full time author.

So how does he write such thrilling novels? For starters, he says that that he builds fiction on top of facts. Of course we all have our different tastes and not all of us might find John Gresham’s books worth the read but still, Grisham has a huge fan base with his books being translated into at least twenty nine different languages and there are more than two hundred and forty five million Grisham books in print worldwide. With at-least eleven of his books turned into movies, it was only expected that he would venture out into screenplay writing- and he did that in 2004 when he wrote Mickey. He also served as producer in the film.

Even though most of his books are fiction, Grisham actually wrote a novel based on a true story. The novel is titled the “The innocent man” My bookmark is still on page 56 so I won’t say much about the book except that it was hard to put it aside to type this.

Below is a list of some of his works in chronological order from date of publication

1. A Time to Kill (1989)
2. The Firm (1991)
3. The Pelican Brief (1992)
4. The Client (1993)
5. The Chamber (1994)
6. The Rainmaker (1995)
7. The Runaway Jury (1996)
8. The Partner (1997)
9. The Street Lawyer (1998)
10. The Testament (1999)
11. The Brethren (2000)
12. A Painted House (2001)
13. Skipping Christmas (2001)
14. The Summons (2002)
15. The King of Torts (2003)
16. Bleachers (2003)
17. The Last Juror (2004)
18. The Broker (2005)
19. The Innocent man (2006)
20. Playing for Pizza (2007)
21. The Appeal (2008)
22. The Associate (2009)
23. Ford County (2009)
24. The Confession
25. Theodoere Boone
26. The Litigators