Half Upon a Time trilogy James Riley's first published novel, Half Upon a Time, was released on September 7, 2010, and published by Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It is a fantasy novel centered around a boy named Jack, the fictional son of the main character from the children's story
Jack and the Beanstalk, and a girl named May who is from our nonfictional world. The novel incorporates plot points from various
Brothers Grimm fairy tales, including
Little Red Riding Hood,
Sleeping Beauty, and
Snow White. This is Riley's first story centered around the idea that the fictional and nonfictional worlds are connected, a common theme in his first eight novels and his last three. The two other books in the trilogy,
Twice Upon a Time (published April 24, 2012) and
Once Upon the End (published May 7, 2013), expand upon May and Jack's adventures as they seek to thwart the main antagonist, known as the Wicked Queen.
Half Upon a Time was included on the 2014–2015 Sunshine State Young Readers Award Middle School Master List, was a
Mark Twain Readers Award finalist, and was listed as a
NCTE/CLA Notable Children's Book in the English Language Arts.
Once Upon the End was included on the MSTA Reading Circle List. In 2022, He published a spinoff of
Half Upon a Time called
Once Upon Another Time. Story Thieves series James Riley launched his second series with the release of the novel
Story Thieves on January 20, 2015. The
meta novel centers around Owen, a nonfictional boy from our world, and Bethany, a half-fictional girl. The duo works to stop a fictional wizard named the Magister from the
Kiel Gnomenfoot series (a parody of
Dumbledore from the
Harry Potter series), as he angrily reacts to the realization that he is a fictional character. James Riley covers a number of different genres in the
Story Thieves series.
Story Thieves: The Stolen Chapters (published January 19, 2016) is a
mystery novel.
Story Thieves: Secret Origins (published January 17, 2017) is a superhero novel with occasional
comic book-style pages.
Story Thieves: Pick the Plot (published September 26, 2017) is James Riley's first
gamebook, but unlike most gamebooks, it is not set in
second person.
Pick the Plot makes a substantial attempt to break the
fourth wall, not only in its gamebook genre but also due to its plot twist in which Owen discovers that the fictional and nonfictional worlds originated from the same universe before the
Big Bang. Nobody, the supposed author of
Pick the Plot, also claims that readers are living inside of a book and the
Story Thieves stories is factual, and as readers pick the plot, they are orchestrating real time travel. The final book in the series,
Story Thieves: Worlds Apart (published March 20, 2018) returns to the original
Story Thieves' fantasy genre, and sees Owen and Bethany work to foil the ambitions of the main antagonist, Nobody.
Story Thieves appeared on
The New York Times Best Seller list for twenty-three consecutive weeks, as well as on the
Publishers Weekly bestsellers list.
The Revenge of Magic series The Revenge of Magic, the first book in Riley's third series, was released on March 5, 2019, almost a year after his previous work. Shortly after an attack on
Washington, D.C., by magical
giants and his father's resulting death, Fort Fitzgerald is recruited to a government-run school for magic. Here, Fort encounters an "Old One", an otherworldly being which vaguely resembles
characters of the same name from the
Cthulhu Mythos. Fort and other children from the school eventually use magic to banish the Old One before it can summon others of its race to their reality. Later books in the series include
The Revenge of Magic: The Last Dragon, published on October 8, 2019,
The Revenge of Magic: The Future King, published on March 3, 2020,
The Revenge of Magic: The Timeless One, published on October 3, 2020, and
The Revenge of Magic: The Chosen One, published on March 2, 2021. As with the
Story Thieves series, the cover art for the
Revenge of Magic series is by Vivienne To. The film rights for
The Revenge of Magic were acquired by Greg Silverman's
Stampede Ventures, an independent film company, in August 2018.
Once Upon Another Time trilogy Once Upon Another Time, the first book in James Riley's fourth series was released in 2022. It serves as a spinoff for
Half Upon a Time. Later books include
Tall Tales (2022) and
Happily Ever After (2023). The cover art for
Once Upon Another Time is by Vivienne To.
''The Dragon's Apprentice'' series James Riley's ''The Dragon's Apprentice'' series was published by Labyrinth Road, an imprint of
Random House Children's Books, division of
Penguin Random House Publishing on April 1, 2025. It it his first book not published by Aladdin. ''The Dragon's Apprentice'' follows twelve-year-old Ciara in the town of Skael, where magic has been forbidden by the Emperor throughout the Draconic Empire. Ciara accidentally summons a dragon named Scorch, who mentors Ciara and helps her try to rescue her mother and liberate her village from the Emperor. The second book in the series, ''The Dragon's Apprentice: Revenants Return
, was published on February 3, 2026. Revenants Return'' continues with Ciara's tale, with her summoning the world-ending Revenants, while dealing with Prince Aiden from the Empire. A third book is planned for release on November 3, 2026, titled ''The Dragon's Apprentice: Destroyer of Magic.
The Emperor has taken Scorch and separated the dragon from Ciara, but Prince Aiden is working with her to locate the dragon and overthrow the Emperor. There is also the appearance of "a monster masquerading as a human who could destroy magic once and for all", where the theme of destroying magic reappears after The Revenge of Magic: The Chosen One.
James Riley had previously destroyed magic in The Chosen One
, or rather the rules of order that limited the pure chaos magic was made of, and the theme of order and chaos can be found in all his books, most notably the Story Thieves
series.'' == References ==