Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, John Grisham dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn't have the right stuff, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. He practiced law for nearly a decade in Southaven and served in the state House of Representatives until 1990. Inspired by the actual testimony in a rape case, Grisham got up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work. He spent three years on A Time to Kill; it was eventually bought by Wynwood press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991. Grisham lives with his wife and their two children. The family splits their time between their Victorian home on a farm in Mississippi and a plantation near Charlottesville, VA. When he's not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes. He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams.