Ridley Pearson is the Edgar-nominated author of 66 books, including two #1 New York Times bestsellers.
His crime novels include nine Lou Boldt thrillers following a Seattle police detective, beginning with Undercurrents (1988), along with the Walt Fleming and Risk Agent series. Investigators have credited research from Undercurrents with helping solve three real-life homicides. His Lou Boldt short story “Boldt’s Broken Angel” was a 2010 finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Short Story and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger.
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, which he wrote under the pen name Joyce Reardon, was adapted as an ABC television event.
For younger readers, he created Disney’s bestselling Kingdom Keepers series, in which a group of friends fight to save the Disney theme parks, and its continuation, Kingdom Keepers Inheritance. His newest series is Magical Map. He has also written the Steel Trapp and Lock & Key novels and the Super Sons graphic novels for DC.
He and humorist Dave Barry have written ten books together: the five Peter and the Starcatchers novels, three Never Land books, Science Fair, and the illustrated picture book Walt Disney’s Peter Pan. Peter and the Starcatchers is a prequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Its stage adaptation, the Broadway play Peter and the Starcatcher, was nominated for nine Tony Awards and won five.
Pearson is also a songwriter and a dramatist for the stage. He is creating Steel Trapp, a new stage musical loosely based on his novel Steel Trapp: The Academy, co-writing the book with Chip Lamb and the music with Paul Gregory, and writing the lyrics. He and Barry met in the Rock Bottom Remainders, an all-author rock band formed to support First Amendment causes. Before disbanding, the band raised more than $3.5 million for nonprofits. Its members included Stephen King, Amy Tan, Scott Turow and Mitch Albom.
Pearson was the first American to receive the Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction at Wadham College, Oxford University. He has taught creative writing at Fudan University in Shanghai and at Boise State University. He divides his time between Hailey, Idaho, and Provence, France.
Explore all of Ridley’s books for young readers on the Kingdom Keepers and Magical Map pages, or visit Disney Books.
