Sidney Sheldon, the best selling author of all those novels you would be ashamed to let others see you read (but you really enjoy them all the same) has died:
Sidney Sheldon, an Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriter who went on to become one of the world's most prolific novelists, died in California on Tuesday at the age of 89, a publicist said.
Sheldon died of complications from pneumonia at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, near his Palm Springs home, said Sean Rossall, publicist at Warren Cowan and Associates.
Sheldon became an American icon in the 1970s with novels like "The Other Side of Midnight" and "Bloodline," bestsellers spun out of international intrigue and the sexual liberation of the era. Strong women were often the main characters.
He sure found a successful niche:
He published 18 novels and sold 300 million copies, making him a paperback stand staple for decades. Translations into 71 languages in 180 countries won him a listing in "The Guinness Book of Records" as "the world's most translated author."
I don't read them any more but I do remember them: he certainly knew how to keep a narrative going.
