Rarely has an author had such an impact on international literature with her first novel, especially when it focuses on the dark subjects of rape, child murder, and the dissolution of families. Yet with The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold seemed to manage the impossible.

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was 14 when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” So begins The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold’s novel about loss and redemption, one of the best-reviewed novels of 2002. The book quickly became an unprecedented international bestseller, with translations in over 40 languages and American hardcover sales alone of nearly three million copies. Three months after the publication of The Lovely Bones, Sebold’s 1999 memoir Lucky, an account of her rape at the age of 18 and the trial that followed, was issued in paperback. This searing account of violence and the criminal justice system also rose to number one on The New York Times Bestseller list.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Sebold grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended Syracuse University as well as the University of Houston and UC Irvine.

Sebold is also the author of the novel The Almost Moon (2007).

Peter Jackson, the Academy Award winning director of The Lord of the Rings, will write and direct the film version of The Lovely Bones for a 2009 release.

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“Ms. Sebold [has] the ability to capture both the ordinary and the extraordinary, the banal and the horrific, in lyrical, unsentimental prose.”

— The New York Times

”[The Lovely Bones] is an utterly original and deeply affecting novel, one that…ultimately creates a form of its own.”

– Maria Russo, Washington Post

”Sebold takes an enormous risk in her wonderfully strange debut novel…A stunning achievement.”

– The New Yorker