African-American best-selling author of action-filled romantic period
fiction. Yerby's short story "Health Card" won a special O. Henry
Memorial Award for a first published short story in 1944. His first
novel, The Foxes of Harrow, was incredibly successful; published in
1946, by the end of the year it had sold over a million copies. He went
on to publish 32 more novels. In the latter half of his life, Yerby
lived in France and then in Spain.