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Harlan Coben

Writer, Producer, ActorBorn January 4, 1962 (63 years)
Harlan Coben (born January 4, 1962) is an American writer of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve the resurfacing of unresolved or misinterpreted events in the past, murders, or fatal accidents and have multiple twists. Twelve of his novels have been adapted for film and television.

Coben has won an Edgar Award, a Shamus Award, and an Anthony Award—the first author to receive all three. His books have been translated into 46 languages and sold over 90 million copies.

Coben was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and was raised in Livingston, where he graduated from Livingston High School, with his childhood friend, future governor Chris Christie. His brother is the noted businessman Lawrence S. Coben.

He studied political science at Amherst College, where he was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, along with Dan Brown. Coben was in his senior year at college when he realized he wanted to write.

After graduating in 1984, Coben worked in the travel industry, in a company owned by his grandfather. It was during that time when he wrote his first book, romantic suspense thriller Play Dead, which was accepted for publication when he was 26 and released in 1990. It was followed by Miracle Cure in 1991. He then began writing a series of thrillers featuring a former basketball player turned sports agent, Myron Bolitar, who often finds himself investigating murders involving his clients.

Tell No One, his first stand-alone thriller since the creation of the Myron Bolitar series in 1995, was published in 2001. A French-language film adaptation based on the book was released in 2006. Coben followed Tell No One with nine more stand-alone novels. His novel Hold Tight, published on April 15, 2008, was his first book to debut at number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.

In 2003, Coben published a short story about his father, who had died of a heart attack at the age of 59 in 1988. Entitled "The Key to My Father," the story was published in The New York Times on Father's Day, June 15, 2003. Besides The New York Times, his essays and columns have appeared in Parade magazine and Bloomberg Views.

Coben lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey, with his wife Anne Armstrong-Coben, a pediatrician, and their four children.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Harlan Coben, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For

  • The Stranger
  • Fool Me Once
  • Stay Close
  • Tell No One
  • Safe (2018)
  • The Innocent
  • The Five
  • Harlan Coben's Shelter
  • Missing You (2025)
  • The Woods
  • Gone for Good
  • Hold Tight
  • Just One Look (2025)
  • Caught

Filmography

2025
2025
Caught (TV Series) · as Novel
2025
Just One Look (2025) (TV Series) · as Novel
2025
Missing You (2025) (TV Series) · as Novel
2024
Fool Me Once (TV Series) · as Novel
2023
Harlan Coben's Shelter (TV Series) · as Novel
2022
Hold Tight (TV Series) · as Novel
2021
Stay Close (TV Series) · as Novel
2021
Gone for Good (TV Series) · as Novel
2021
The Innocent (TV Series) · as Novel
2020
The Woods (TV Series) · as Novel
2020
The Stranger (TV Series) · as Novel
2018
Safe (2018) (TV Series) · as Novel
2017
Just One Look (TV Series) · as Novel
2016
The Five (TV Series) · as Novel
2015
No Second Chance (TV Series) · as Novel
2006
Tell No One · as Novel

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