Anne Rivers Siddons

Anne Rivers Siddons was an American novelist, born Sybil Anne Rivers in Atlanta, Georgia, best known for bestselling fiction set across the American South. After a career in advertising and magazine journalism, including years as a senior editor at Atlanta magazine, she published her debut novel, Heartbreak Hotel, in 1976. She reached wide popularity with Peachtree Road (1988), an Atlanta-set family saga that novelist Pat Conroy called the Southern novel for its generation, and went on to write more than a dozen further bestsellers exploring class, marriage, and place in the South. Her novel The House Next Door (1978) stands apart as a haunted-house horror story, structured as a suburban ghost tale about a home that destroys its successive owners; it was adapted into a 2006 television film. Several of her novels, including Heartbreak Hotel, were also adapted for film and television.