Home Read Chapter 1 FAQs A Chicago Reading List The Authors Invite us to your event Contact Us ...More About William Horwood ...More About Helen Rappaport Our next appearances William HORWOOD & Helen RAPPAPORT for answers to Frequently Asked Questions click here WILLIAM HORWOOD was born in Oxford in 1944 and raised on the East Kent coast - the setting for his recent acclaimed memoir The Boy with No Shoes (Headline, 2004). After seven years as a Fleet Street feature editor on the London Daily Mail his first novel, Duncton Wood, was published in 1980. The six volume Duncton Chronicles have since become a modern classic in the animal fantasy genre. His novel Skallagrigg (Penguin, 1984), based on the life of his daughter Rachel who has cerebral palsy was filmed by the BBC and won the BAFTA Film of the Year award in 1994. He fitted in four sequels to Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows between other work, including The Willows in Winter (filmed by Carlton Television). Dark Hearts of Chicago is his first fictional collaboration. He is currently working on a major new fantasy series.   HELEN RAPPAPORT was born in Bromley. After studying Russian at Leeds University, she rejected suggestions of a career in the Foreign Office and opted instead for the acting profession, appearing on TV and in films until the mid-1990s. In tandem with her acting career, from the mid-70s she worked as a Russian translator in the theatre, collaborating with many British playwrights on new versions of Russian plays - - notably the entire Chekhov opus. In the early 1990s she began pursuing her love of history and started writing, finally making the transition from actress to writer in 1999 with her first academic book, Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion (ABC-Clio, 1999). This was followed by An Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers (ABC-Clio, 2001) and Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion (ABC-Clio, 2003). Her first trade history book is No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War (Aurum Press, February 2007). She is currently working on a major new Russian history project. DARK HEARTS OF CHICAGO will be published in April 2007 by Random House

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