Obits

Partner and co-founder of Boston-based agency Kneerim & Williams Jill Kneerim died on April 22 at age 83. She was an editor at Simon & Schuster and co-founder of Grossman Publishers, then in 1990 founded the agency with Ike Williams. Her authors included Pulitzer Prize winners Matthew Desmond, Caroline Elkins, and Stephen Greenblatt among others, including Brad Meltzer, who paid tribute to her online: “For 28 years now, she taught me to have faith in growth — and to have faith in myself. Especially these last five years as I pushed to be a better writer.” Her colleagues at Kneerim […]

Christopher Finch, 82, author of thirty nonfiction and fiction books, art critic and painter, died on April 1 in Los Angeles. Finch’s books include The Art of Walt Disney, Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy Garland, Norman Rockwell’s America, two volumes on the artist Chuck Close, and more.

Roy Tedoff, former director of college manufacturing at Norton for many years, died on April 1. Tedoff joined Norton in 1969.

British thriller writer Jack Higgins, 92, who published 85 books, died on April at his home in Jersey, one of the British Channel Islands. Published in 1975, his best known book The Eagle Has Landed was an international bestseller.

Soho Press co-founder Alan J. Hruska, 88, died of lymphoma on March 29 at home in Manhattan. He founded Soho in 1986 along with his wife, Laura Chapman Hruska, and Juris Jurjevics. A litigator at Cravath Swaine & Moore for 44 years, he was also the author of multiple novels, starting with Borrowed Time (1985) and recently including a number of recent legal thrillers. His daughter Bronwen Hruska is the publisher of Soho Press.

Novelist Ted Mooney died on March 22 after living with heart disease. He was 70. Mooney was a longtime editor of Art in America and his novel Easy Travel to Other Planets was nominated for the National Book Award and won the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.