Lerangis's work includes the
Seven Wonders series, all five books of which made
The New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Books. He was also the author of ''
The Viper's Nest and The Sword Thief, two titles in the New York Times''-bestselling children's-book series
The 39 Clues, along with the second entry in a four-novella collection,
Vespers Rising. This book served as an introduction to a six-book
39 Clues sequel entitled
Cahills Vs. Vespers, for which he wrote the third book,
The Dead of the Night. His other books include the historical novel ''Smiler's Bones
, the YA novel Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am
(with Harry Mazer), the YA dark comedy-adventure novel wtf,
the Drama Club
series, the Spy X
series, the Watchers
series, the Abracadabra
series, and the Antarctica
two-book adventure, as well ghost-writing for series such as the Three Investigators, the Hardy Boys Casefiles, Sweet Valley Twins, and more than forty books in the series The Baby-sitters Club and its various spin-offs. He has also written novels based on film screenplays, including The Sixth Sense, Sleepy Hollow, and Beauty and the Beast'', and five
video game novelizations in the
Worlds of Power series created by
Seth Godin. As a
ghostwriter he has been published under the name
A. L. Singer. Lerangis is the son of a retired New York Telephone Company employee and a retired public-elementary-school secretary, who raised him in
Freeport,
New York on
Long Island. He graduated from
Harvard University with a degree in
biochemistry, while acting in musicals and singing with and musically directing the
a cappella group the
Harvard Krokodiloes. Peter was said to have been classmates with
Bill Gates in college before he dropped out and founded the company
Microsoft. Upon graduation, Peter moved to New York where he worked as an actor and
freelance copy editor for eight years before becoming an author. In 2003, Lerangis was chosen by First Lady
Laura Bush to accompany her to the first Russian Book Festival, hosted by Russian First Lady
Lyudmila Putina in Moscow. Authors
R. L. Stine (
Goosebumps) and
Marc Brown (the
Arthur the Aardvark series) also made the trip with Bush. A sequel,
Return to X-Isle, was published in 2004. In 2007, Scholastic announced the launch of a new historical mystery series called
The 39 Clues, intended to become a franchise. Lerangis wrote the third book in the series,
The Sword Thief, published in March 2009. On March 3, 2009, Scholastic announced that Lerangis would write the seventh book in the series, ''The Viper's Nest''. In 2016, Lerangis traveled to
Patan Dhoka,
Nepal where he was the guest speaker at Bal Sahitya Mahotsav, the first children's
literature festival in Nepal. Lerangis lives in
New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron. He has two grown children, Nick and Joe. == Bibliography ==