- He was born in San Francisco and given the name John Griffith Chaney. His father wasn't in the picture, and when he was eight months old, his mother, Flora, married a civil war veteran named John London, who adopted him. Jack was a nickname he started using later in his childhood.
- Flora was a psychic, who believed she could talk to dead people and predict the future. She came from a rich family, but left home when the family lost their money. She worked as a psychic and took up with William Chaney, an astrologer. Fatherhood wasn't part of William's life plan, and when Flora told him she was pregnant, he ordered her to have an abortion. Flora then tried to kill herself by overdosing on laudanum. When that failed, she tried to shoot herself in the head but the gun didn't work. William moved to Chicago, claiming he wasn't the father, as he was impotent.
- When Jack was born, Flora was unwell, and didn't want to look after him, so he was taken in by a lady called Virginia Prentiss, a former slave. Although in time, Flora took him back, the two families were neighbours, so Virginia remained a significant figure in his life. When he was 15, it was Virginia who lent him the money to buy a boat so he could leave his job at a cannery and poach Oysters instead.
- At 18, he joined a group called Kelly's Army, a group of unemployed men who were marching on Washinigton DC to protest about unemployment. He left them, however, and went to Niagara Falls, where he was arrested for vagrancy and put in prison for a month.
- After that, he went to university but dropped out after a term because he'd run out of money. It was then he decided to follow the Gold rush and set out for Klondike. His novels, Call of the Wild and White Fang, were inspired by this experience but it was a hard life with not enough to eat. London suffered from malnourishment and scurvy and eventually was forced to go home. When he got home he learned that his step-father had died. Jack decided to write full time to support his mother.
- While in the Klondike, he'd set himself the task of writing a thousand words every day, a discipline he kept up once he got home.
- As well as his well-known novels, he wrote short stories including To Build a Fire and Love of Life. Not all his tales were set in the wild north. Some, like The Pearls of Parlay, were set in the South Pacific.
- Later in his life he collected books - he had 15,000 books in his library and referred to them as "the tools of my trade".
- He was married twice. His first wife was Bessie, who he wasn't in love with, but they were close friends and London thought that was enough to make a successful marriage and bring up a family. They had two daughters but they split up after three years and were subsequently divorced. He later married Charmian, who was, according to biographers, his soul mate.
- He was an alcoholic, which took a toll on his health. His kidneys started failing and he was given morphine to control the pain. He died at the age of 40 from uremia and morphine poisoning. Some biographers believe the morphine poisoning wasn't accidental and he'd killed himself.
NEW!
A Tale of Two Sisters
During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.
Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.
As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.
Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?
Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?
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