Ken Follett

Kenneth Martin Follett is an author who is known for his historical novels and thrillers. Follett began his career as a journalist, but decided it was not challenging enough for him so left journalism to work in publishing. He worked as publishing manager at Everest Books in London during the day and writing novels in all of his off time. What started as a way to raise some money to fix his car soon became a career. In 1978 he published his first major work Eye of the Needle that sold more than 10 million copies and made him rich and famous. All of the following novels that Follett wrote also became best sellers and ended up on the New York Times best-seller list.

In total Follett has written 29 books. He began his career writing spy thrillers and then for his sixth book he switched genres and began writing historical fiction. The first historical fiction book that he wrote was The Pillars of the Earth and was published in 1989. His readers were surprised at the shift of genre, but the books still made it to the New York Times best-seller list and stayed there for eighteen weeks. In all The Pillars of the Earth sold eighteen million copies. He continued writing in the historical fiction genre for three more novels. These included Night Over Water, A Dangerous Fortune, and A Place Called Freedom.

In 1996, he released The Third Twin, which returned him back to the thriller genre. He followed this with three other thrillers Publishing Trends, The Hammer of Eden, and Code to Zero. Follett continued this pattern of moving between the genres. He is also known for writing the Century trilogy, made up of Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, and Edge of Eternity.

Follett's latest book 'A Column of Fire' is currently being written and should be published in fall of 2017.