Horace McCoy was born near Nashville, Tennessee in 1897. His varied career included reporting and sports editing, acting as bodyguard to a politician, doubling for a wrestler and writing for films and magazines.

A founder of the celebrated Dallas Little Theatre, his novels include I Should Have Stayed Home and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. He died in 1955.

One of the best-selling authors of all time, Erle Stanley Gardner’s greatest creations include crusading attorney Perry Mason (star of more than eighty novels, a long-running TV series and TV movies) and the hardboiled detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, who appeared in more than two dozen adventures of their own.

An attorney himself, Gardner also founded the Court of Last Resort, a group that investigated criminal cases they believed had ended in wrong convictions.