In 1985 Nicholas penned his first novel The Passing while home for the summer between freshman and sophomore years at Notre Dame. It was never published. In 1989 he wrote his second, also unpublished, novel The Royal Murders. In 1994, over a period of six months, Nicholas penned what was to be his first published novel, The Notebook. He was discovered by literary agent Theresa Park, who picked The Notebook out of her agency's slush pile, liked it, and offered to represent him. In October of 1995, Park secured a $ 1 million advance for The Notebook from Time Warner Book Group. The novel was published in October 1996 and made the New York Times best seller list on its first week.
After his first publishing success, he wrote a string of international bestsellers (See "List of Published Works"), all of which were translated into over thirty-five languages. Three of his novels have been made into feature-length films: Message in a Bottle (1999), A Walk to Remember (2002), and The Notebook (2004). As of March 2006, each movie has grossed a total lifetime
Some Published Works of
NICHOLAS SPARKS
A WALK TO REMEMBER
Tagline: Love is like the wind. You can't see it but you can feel it.
When a prank on a fellow high-school student goes wrong, Landon Carter (Shane West) is threatened with expulsion. His punishment is mandatory participation in various after-school activities, such as tutoring disadvantaged children and acting in the drama club's Spring play. At these functions he is forced to interact with Jamie Sullivan (Mandy Moore), a girl he has known for many years but with whom he rarely interacted. When Landon realizes that he needs help learning his lines for the play, he asks Jamie for help. .
Jamie finally tells Landon that she has terminal leukemia and has stopped responding to treatments. As Jamie is hospitalized, Landon fulfills various wishes on Jamie's list, such as building her a telescope so she can see a comet. Through this process, Landon and Jamie learn more about the nature of love. The movie ends with Jamie's death, but only after the couple are married in the same chapel as was Jamie's deceased mother, the event that topped Jamie's wish list. Landon himself becomes a better person through Jamie's memory, achieving the goals that he set out to do, like she did.
MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE
Thrown to the waves, and to fate, the bottle could have ended up anywhere. Instead, it is found just three weeks after it begins its journey. Theresa Osborne, divorced and the mother of a twelve-year-old son, picks it up during a seaside vacation from her job as a Boston newspaper columnist. Inside is a letter that opens with: My Dearest Catherine, I miss you my darling, as I always do, but today is particularly hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together...
For "Garrett," the man who signs the letter, the message is the only way he knows to express his undying love for a woman he has lost. For Theresa, wary of romance since her husband shattered her trust, the message raises questions that intrigue her.
Challenged by the mystery, and pulled to find Garrett by emotions she does not fully understand, Theresa begins a search that takes her to a sunlit coastal town and an unexpected confrontation. Brought together by chance-or something more powerful-Theresa and Garrett are people whose lives are about to touch for a purpose, in a tale that resonates with our deepest hopes for finding that special someone and everlasting love.
THE NOTEBOOK
Set in a modern day nursing home, an elderly man named Noah, but called "Duke" (James Garner), begins to read a love story from his notebook to his wife Allie (Gena Rowlands) who suffers from stage three Alzheimer's. Before her dementia intensified, Allie wrote the love story of her and Noah down in a notebook. She gave it to him with instructions to read it to her on days she couldn't remember, promising that her memory would come back as Noah read her their love story.
The film/book begins in June 1940. Seventeen-year-old Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams), the only child of a rich plantation owner, and her friends are spending the evening at a local carnival in South Carolina; Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling), a country boy who is with his friend Finn (Kevin Connolly), first sees Allie, who is with her friend Sara (Heather Wahlquist). The film goes back to the elderly couple, and Allie asks Duke who Allie chose. She realizes the answer herself, and the scene, briefly, goes again to years earlier, where Allie goes back to Noah again, and they both embrace in reunion. Allie suddenly remembers her past and she and Noah joyfully spend a brief intimate time together, Allie then suffers a "sundown" (described in a deleted scene when Allie has no recognition of anything or anyone around her) and panics. She has to be sedated by the attending physician. This proves to be difficult for Noah to watch and he breaks down. The next morning, Noah is found unconscious in bed (it is revealed in a deleted scene that he suffered a heart attack after the incident with Allie, the strain proving too much for a man with an already weakened heart) and he is rushed to the hospital, but he is later returned to the nursing home's intensive care ward. He walks in Allie's bedroom that night, and Allie remembers again. They talk, and Allie asks him if he thinks their love could take them away together, to which Noah replies, "I think our love can do anything we want it to." They fall asleep holding on to each other, and the nurse comes in the morning to realize that they are both dead.
A BEND IN THE ROAD
From America's best-loved and bestselling author of stories of the heart comes a dramatic tale about a couple's newfound happiness together and the shocking secret that threatens to keep them apart. Miles' life seemed to end the day his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident. He still rises each morning to take care of his young son, and carries out his duties as deputy sheriff of New Burn, North Carolina, but it's all in a numb and hopeless haze. Then Miles meets Sarah Andrews, his son's first grade teacher, who is rebuilding her own life after a shattering divorce. Slowly, their newfound love starts to soothe the pain of the past. But when a devastating secret is revealed, they discover they have much more than love in common. Now, they are questioning everything they ever believed in - and had just begun to hope for.