Ransom Riggs is the American author of the popular Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children young-adult fantasy series which has been made into a 2016 fantasy film featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Eva Green and directed by Tim Burton.
The series is enjoyed both by young-adults and children alike, and with its ever-growing popularity, more and more readers are looking for picking up these wonderful stories which were born out of box of vintage photos picked up at a flea market.
Here are the Ransom Riggs books in order for his series and other books he has written over the years.
New Ransom Riggs Books
The Conference of the Birds, (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #5), 2020
Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children Series
- Tales of the Peculiar, 2016 (prequel novella)
- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, 2011
- Hollow City, 2014
- Library of Souls, 2016
- A Map of Days, 2018
- The Conference of the Birds, 2020
Other Ransom Riggs Books
Ransom Riggs Biography
Ransom Riggs was born in 1979 on a farm in Maryland. He soon moved with his family to Englewood, Florida where he grew up. He loved entertainment from a very young age when he would write short stories and make short movies, as well as take tons of photos with his camera.
Some of his early inspirations in fantasy were His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, and The Chronicles of Narnia. He attended Pine View School for the Gifted, after which he went to Kenyon College in rural Ohio where he got his degree in English literature, following which he went to film school and got a master’s degree in fine arts from University of Southern California.
After his degree in film, he tried to get a job in the business, however, it was not successful. Thus he began as a blogger for Mental Floss and writing scripts. If anyone says blogging is not fruitful, the author Ransom Riggs proved them wrong as his blogging at Mental Floss got him to write a book called The Sherlock Holmes Handbook, which accompanied the movie Sherlock Holmes in 2009.
He got this job through Quirk Books, a small publisher who knew about his work for Mental Floss and wanted him to write a book about Sherlock Holmes. His next project proved to be his biggest one yet, involving the famous Ransom Riggs books for young adults. He wrote the book Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which became the first in a new series. The book was sparked from his love for vintage photos which he would see at flea markets while browsing around with his grandmother. In 2009 he found a box of vintage snapshots at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet in Pasadena with photos that would become the basis of the book.
Initially, he wanted to create a Halloween book of photos, each accompanied by a few poem rhymes, however, Jason Rekulak, the publisher of Quirk Books in Philadelphia, gave him the idea to use these for a novel. The story is told from Jacob Portman’s point of view. He is a 16-year-old boy in Florida who kept hearing from his grandfather old tales about growing up on an island close to Wales in a school with strange abilities. Eventually, he started to believe that these stories were more or less true. The first Ransom Riggs book in the series landed straight away at the best-seller list.
Initially the book was written for adults, but the publisher realized that young adults would enjoy reading it too. Thus, soon it was classified as a young-adult story, and it was classified on the Barnes and Nobles shelves as such. The photos are quite creepy in the book, and this drew in older kids in troves. Everyone wanted to read the book with those strange photos. At the onset, Ransom Riggs had only a few photos, however, as he started working on his book, he contacted many collectors who would help him by giving or selling him snapshots. Thus he also got to learn a lot about the world of snapshot collecting.
Reading the Ransom Riggs books in order is quite easy since so far he has four books written with another two in the works for publication in the future. While the initial series was meant to be a trilogy, the fourth book starts a new trilogy again featuring Jacob Portman who is now returning to his Florida home.
The book A Map of Days, the fourth in the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series can be either read after the initial trilogy, or as a standalone since Jacob is now on new adventures with his friends in America. Also, for the first time ever, some of the photos in the book will be in color. The Conference of the Birds follows the story from where A Map of Days left off. This is the book that also has some love interest brewing along. Tales of the Peculiar, the novella published in 2016, should be read as first if you haven’t started reading the Miss Peregrine series yet.
The author Ransom Riggs is married to Taheref Mafi, the author of a young-adult supernatural series called Shatter Me. They both live in Los Angeles with a small baby daughter.
Praise for Ransom Riggs Books
Creepy in the best way possible (The Guardian)
Readers searching for the next Harry Potter may want to visit Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (CNN)
A thrilling, Tim Burton-esque tale with haunting photographs (USA Today)
With its “X-Men: First Class”-meets-time-travel story line, David Lynchian imagery, and rich, eerie detail, it’s no wonder “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” has been snapped up by Twentieth Century Fox. B+ (Entertainment Weekly)
The stakes are higher than ever as Jacob and his friends are thrust into the untamed landscape of American peculiardom (Tor.com)
A Map of Days reveals Ransom Riggs at the peak of his powers, leaving loyal fans ravenous for more (NY Journal of Books)
Peculiar’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Riggs’ chilling, wondrous novel is already headed to the movies. (People)
A tense, moving, and wondrously strange first novel. The photographs and text work together brilliantly to create an unforgettable story. (John Green)
You’ll love it if you want a good thriller for the summer. It’s a mystery, and you’ll race to solve it before Jacob figures it out for himself. (Seventeen)
Riggs deftly moves between fantasy and reality, prose and photography to create an enchanting and at times positively terrifying story. (AP)
References
Books Reading Order » Authors »
I bought books 2,3,4, quite some time ago and loved them, I have passed them on to a great granddaughter aged 10 and she loved them, so I am purchasing books 5 and 6 so that I can read them before I give to her.
I loved the books and can’t wait
Love the idea of using weird vintage photos for the basis of the books. Can you imagine what people will think of the photos we take NOW, 100 years in the future? I can hear it now, “oh how weird those people were back then, and how creepy that they actually TOUCHED each other, not to mention the physical activity they did and outside of their habitats none the less!” Wish I would have thought of that!