May We Suggest...Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Charles Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on December 31, 1965. As a child, he lived in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, Nebraska, finally settling in Fair Oaks, California, at the age of eight. His father was a professor, his mother a homemaker, then an optometrist’s assistant. He lived in Fair Oaks through high school, graduated valedictorian in 1984, and received a full track scholarship to the University of Notre Dame.

After breaking the Notre Dame school record as part of a relay team in 1985 as a freshman (a record which still stands), he was injured and spent the summer recovering. During that summer, he wrote his first novel, though it was never published. He majored in Business Finance and graduated with high honors in 1988.

He and his wife Catherine were married in July 1989. While living in Sacramento, he wrote his second, unpublished novel and worked a variety of jobs over the next three years. In 1990, he collaborated on a book with Billy Mills, the Olympic Gold Medalist, and it was published. Though it received scant publicity, sales topped 50,000 copies in the first year of release.

He began selling pharmaceuticals and moved to North Carolina in 1992. In 1994, at the age of 28, he wrote The Notebook and in October, 1995, rights to the The Notebook were sold to Warner Books. It was published in October 1996, and he followed with Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003), The Wedding(2003), True Believer (2005), At First Sight (a sequel to True Believer) (2005), Dear John (2006), The Choice (2007), The Lucky One (2008), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010) and a non-fiction memoir, Three Weeks With My Brother (2004), written with his brother, Micah. All were domestic and international best sellers and were translated into more than 45 languages. His newest book,The Best of Me, will be released in October 2011.

The film version of Message in a Bottle, starring Kevin Costner and Robin Wright, was released in 1999, A Walk to Remember, starring Mandy Moore, was released in January 2002, and The Notebook, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, was released in June, 2004. Nights in Rodanthe, starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane, was released in September 2008. Dear John, starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, and The Last Song, starring Miley Cyrus and Greg Kinnear, were released in 2010 to great box office success. The Lucky One, starring Zac Efron, has a tentative release date of spring 2012.

Along with his wife, Sparks founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina, and he spent five years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. Sparks lives in North Carolina with his wife and family.

READ-A-LIKES

Richard Paul Evans is another popular author of gentle stories of great love and inspiration. Characters are less tortured and more in need of finding their inner strength and faith. If readers have already discovered the Christmas Box trilogy, they should sample one of Evans' most recent books, The Last Promise.

Sparks' fans should turn to Emily Grayson when looking for a similar author. Grayson writes in a slightly more dramatic style about romantic relationships with endings that are as emotional as Sparks' but less bittersweet. Start with her second novel, The Gazebo, which follows the enduring love of two people who tried their whole lives to be together and failed.

Writing in the same vein, but with more nostalgia is James Michael Pratt. His first three books, The Last Valentine, The Lighthouse Keeper and Ticket Home, use the dramatic backdrop of World War II to tell the stories of couples who are separated by war but joined at the heart.