Bookish birthdays for the week of July 3, 2022

Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of July 3, 2022.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804): Hawthorne’s emotions about his ancestor William Hathorne, a key player in the Salem witchcraft trials, can be clearly seen in the novels for which he earned the most acclaim, The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables (and in the fact that the author changed the spelling of his last name).

Hilary Mantel (July 6, 1952): Mantel has won the Man Booker Prize twice, for the first two books in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy: Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.

Robert Heinlein (July 7, 1907): Heinlein played a huge role in the expansion of the science-fiction genre, with Stranger in a Strange Land being one of his most popular works.

Anna Quindlen (July 7, 1953): In addition to her novels (including Black and Blue, Blessings, and Rise and Shine), Quindlen has won acclaim for her newspaper columns, which netted her a Pulitzer Prize, and her memoir, which reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Dean Koontz (July 9, 1945): Fourteen of Koontz’s novels have hit number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list, and sixteen have done so for the paperback version; they include Intensity, Midnight, and The Bad Place.