The 52 Book Club: 2026 Challenge discussion

WEEKLY CHECK-IN
July 23, 2025 -- Week 30

Know any fun facts about famous authors? Any random facts about one of your favourite authors? Let's hear them!

Liz's personal favourite random author fact is the one where, in 1926, Agatha Christie went missing for eleven days, causing a national investigation into her disappearance. There is still lingering debate as to what actually happened. (An intriguing author fact that has made its way into numerous fictional retellings and novels.)

Interesting fact about Anne Perry:
In 1994 it became public knowledge that Perry had been convicted of murder in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1954, when she was fifteen. She and her sixteen-year-old friend Pauline Parker murdered Parker's mother, Honorah. After serving a five-year sentence for the murder, Perry had changed her name (formerly Juliet Hulme) and returned to the United Kingdom. (From Wikipedia)
My husband told me about this when I started reading her William Monk and then her Charlotte & z Thomas Pitt historical mystery novels.

I think Gail Carriger's bio itself is full of fun facts.

"New York Times bestselling author and ex-archaeologist Gail (G.L.) Carriger writes to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in higher learning, a fondness for cephalopods, and a chronic tea habit. She then traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag."