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Sample Contemporary Authors Record

Sample Contemporary Authors Record

Contemporary Authors is an e-resource available in POWER Library.  It provides access to biographical and bibliographical information on nearly 150,000 of today’s most influential authors, including novelists, poets, playwrights, nonfiction writers, print and broadcast journalists, editors, and much more!

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Here is an abridged sample author record:

Author: Rick Riordan

Table of Contents

Career
Awards
Works
Media Adaptations
Descriptive Essay “Sidelights”
Further Readings

Personal Information

Born June 5, 1964, in San Antonio, TX; married; children: Haley, Patrick (sons). Education: Attended North Texas State; graduated from University of Texas, Austin; University of Texas, San Antonio, teacher certification. Addresses: Home: San Antonio, TX. E-mail: rick@rickriordan.com.

Career

Writer. Camp Capers, music director, three years; Presidio Hill School, San Francisco, teacher, 1990-98; Saint Mary’s Hall, San Antonia, TX, middle school teacher, c. 1998-2004. Workshop presenter for such organizations as the Texas Library Association, National Council for Teachers of English, International Reading Association, California Association of Independent Schools, and the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute.

Awards

Anthony Award for Best Original Paperback, and Shamus Award for Best First Private Eye Novel, both 1997, both for Big Red Tequila; Anthony Award for Best Original Paperback, Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Original Paperback, and Shamus Award nomination, all 1998, all for The Widower’s Two-Step; Shamus Award nomination for Best Hardcover P.I. Novel, 2002, for The Devil Went down to Austin; Master Teacher Award, Saint Mary’s Hall, 2002; inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters, 2003; The Lightning Thief was a New York Times Notable Book, 2005; Children’s Choice Book Award for Book of the Year for Fifth to Sixth Grade, for The Red Pyramid; Children’s Choice Book Award for Author of the Year, both Children’s Book Council, both 2011.

Works

  • The Mark of Athena, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2012.
  • The Battle of the Labyrinth, Hyperion Books for Children (New York, NY), 2008.
  • (With others) Demigods and Monsters: Your Favorite Authors on Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series, Borders (Ann Arbor, MI), 2008.

 

“HEROES OF OLYMPUS” SERIES; FOR CHILDREN

  • The Lost Hero, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2010.
  • The Son of Neptune, Thorndike Press (Waterville, ME), 2012.

 

WRITINGS:

“TRES NAVARRE” SERIES; MYSTERY NOVELS

  • Big Red Tequila, Bantam (New York, NY), 1997.
  • The Widower’s Two-Step, Bantam (New York, NY), 1998.
  • The Last King of Texas, Bantam (New York, NY), 2000.
  • The Devil Went down to Austin, Bantam (New York, NY), 2001.
  • Southtown, Bantam (New York, NY), 2004.
  • Mission Road, Bantam (New York, NY), 2005.
  • Rebel Island, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2007.

 

“PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS” SERIES; FOR CHILDREN

  • The Lightning Thief, Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children (New York, NY), 2005.
  • The Sea of Monsters, Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children (New York, NY), 2006.
  • The Titan’s Curse, Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children (New York, NY), 2007.
  • The Heroes of Olympus: The Demigod Diaries, Disney/Hyperion Books (New York, NY), 2012.

 

Additional writings and the Author’s blog is included in Contemporary Authors.

Media Adaptations

The Lightning Thief has been adapted as a sound recording available on cassette and CD by Listening Library/Books on Tape, 2005, and as a film released by Twentieth Century-Fox, 2010.

Descriptive Essay
“Sidelights”

Rick Riordan is an award-winning author of the mystery series featuring the private investigator Tres Navarre. Riordan’s first mystery, Big Red Tequila, introduces Navarre, who has a doctoral degree in medieval studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He also has earned a few degrees from the streets and has an interest in the martial art of Tai Chi Chuan. Failing at academia, Navarre becomes a private investigator in the San Francisco Bay area. An alarming phone call from an old girlfriend sends Navarre back to his hometown of San Antonio, Texas, to investigate the unsolved murder of his father, who was the former sheriff of Bexar County. As the investigation proceeds, Tres stirs up a hornet’s nest of politicians, mobsters, and crooked businessmen. “Riordan writes so well about the people and topography of his Texas hometown that he quickly marks the territory as his own,” commented critic Dick Adler in the Chicago Tribune.

Riordan spent eight years teaching English in a San Francisco middle school before following in his hero’s footsteps by returning to his hometown of San Antonio in the summer of 1998. The author uses his own Tex-Mex style to describe the scenery, people, and popular places of southern Texas. In The Widower’s Two-Step, an old friend hires Tres–who is still an apprentice waiting for his P.I. license–to follow a musician suspected of stealing a demo tape of a budding young singer named Miranda Daniels. While Navarre is on stakeout, the musician is gunned down, drawing Navarre into the arena of dirty dealings, double-crossings, greed, and murder in the country music business. Navarre must extricate Miranda from a tangle of music industry power games and professional grudges. At times Navarre finds himself on the wrong side of the law; local enforcers and the FBI are hot on his trail as he uncovers illegal dealings between local rednecks and European businessmen who have enough stake in country music to warrant murder. A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented: “Riordan showed real talent in Big Red Tequila, but here, he’s relaxed enough to make it look easy.”

The “Sidelights” for Rick Riordan in Contemporary Authors includes over 2,000 more words!

Further Readings

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

PERIODICALS

  • Booklist, May 1, 2001, Jenny McLarin, review of The Devil Went down to Austin, p. 1640; April 15, 2004, Connie Fletcher, review of Southtown, p. 1428; September 15, 2005, Chris Sherman, review of The Lightning Thief, p. 59; July 1, 2006, Diana Tixier Herald, review of The Sea of Monsters, p. 52; May 15, 2007, Diana Tixier Herald, review of The Titan’s Curse, p. 62; October 15, 2008, Ian Chipman, review of The Maze of Bones, p. 39; May 15, 2010, Carolyn Phelan, review of The Red Pyramid, p. 53.
  • Calliope, September, 2011, review of The Red Pyramid.

Many more PERIODICALS and ONLINE sources are included in the FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR section.

SOURCE

Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2014.