1. When I was little, my favorite book was "Are You My Mother?" Around the same time, my parents told me I was adopted. The seeds of angst were planted early.
2. I have food enthusiasms. For two solid months, I'll eat Oreos every night (about 8) with a tall glass of milk. Then I won't eat another Oreo for six months. One month it may be Pop Tarts, the next, chocolate ice cream.
3. I obsessively watch American Idol every season.
4. My wife is a Daughter of the American Revolution, descended from patriots on both sides of her family. I am descended from Swedish people. When her ancestors were fighting for a new nation, mine were fishing.
5. My dinner conversation is 50% original, 50% quotes from my favorite movies and television shows. I think it's a nice balance; my family does not. This year I was fond of blurting out, as Sandy passed the mashed potatoes, "I am the danger!"
6. When I help my son with his essays, his grades go DOWN. I am still struggling with this fact.
7. My dog likes to hold hands.
8. Nothing creeps me out more than a hair clog.
9. I talk to mean reviewers. I know, I know, they can't hear me, but I still argue with them. "I am the one who knocks!"
10. I've lived in the following places: Lakeland, Florida; Tallahassee; Chicago; Winter Haven, Florida; Knoxville; and Gainesville. I liked Knoxville the best.
11. It took me four tries to get through The Lord of the Rings. Then another two or three to understand who everybody was and what all the fuss was about with that ring.
12. My sons' names all begin with the letter J.
Bio:
Rick is the author of thirteen novels and a memoir. His books have been published in over twenty languages and have earned numerous accolades and awards from around the world. His young adult novel, The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, was named a "Best Book of the Year" by Publishers Weekly and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. In 2010, Rick received a Michael L. Printz Honor for The Monstrumologist. The sequel, The Curse of the Wendigo, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His latest novel, The 5th Wave, the first in an epic sci-fi trilogy, made its worldwide debut in 2013, and will soon be a major motion picture for GK Films and Sony Pictures.
Cover Art
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Pictures of Rick
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Here is a list of Rick's upcoming events
Tuesday, May 24 – 7:00 PM, 2016
Little Shop of Stories
133 E Court Square # A
Decatur, GA 30030
Wednesday, May 25 – 5:30 PM, 2016
Blue Bicycle Books
420 King St.
Charleston, SC 29403
Thursday, May 26 – 6:30 PM, 2016
Barnes & Noble
8431 Brier Creek Parkway
Raleigh, NC 27617
Friday, May 27 – 7:00 PM, 2016
Malaprops
55 Haywood St
Asheville, NC 28801
Tuesday, May 31 – 7:00 PM, 2016
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
161 Lexington Green Cir B1
Lexington, KY 40503
Wednesday, June 1 – 7:00 PM, 2016
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
2692 Madison Road
Cincinnati, OH 45208
Thursday, June 2 – 7:00 PM, 2016
Anderson's Bookshop
123 W Jefferson Ave
Naperville, IL 60540
Friday, June 3 – 7:00 PM, 2016
Barnes & Noble
14790 Greyhound Plaza
Carmel, IN 46032
Saturday, June 4 – 2:00 PM, 2016
Parnassus Bookshop
3900 Hillsboro Pike #14
Nashville, TN 37215
Sunday, June 5 – 2:00 PM, 2016
Barnes and Noble Knoxville
8029 Kingston Pike
Knoxville, TN 37919
Saturday, June 11 – 2:00 PM, 2016
Barnes and Noble Ocala
4414 Southwest College Road Ste 500
Ocala, FL 344674
If you’d like to book a visit, drop us a line at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Printz Awards Speech
Watch Rick take his prepared ten minutes speech and condense it to a mere 20 minutes!
Orlando Speech
Rick talking about his two great loves: books – and himself!
Rags & Bones
The best writers of our generation retell the classics.
Literature is filled with sexy, deadly, and downright twisted tales. In this collection, award-winning and bestselling authors reimagine their favorite classic stories, ones that have inspired, awed, and enraged them; ones that have become ingrained in modern culture; and ones that have been too long overlooked. They take these stories and boil them down to their bones, and then reassemble them for a new generation of readers.
Today's most acclaimed authors use their own unique styles to rebuild these twelve timeless stories, including Rick Yancey.
Confessions of a Tax Collector
Twelve years ago, Richard Yancey answered a blind ad in the newspaper offering a salary higher than what he'd made over the three previous years combined. It turned out that the job was for the Internal Revenue Service -- the most hated and feared organization in the federal government.
So Yancey became the man who got in his car, drove to your house, knocked on your door, and made you pay. Never mind that his car was littered with candy wrappers, his palms were sweaty, and he couldn't remember where he stashed his own tax records. He was there on the authority of the United States government.
With "a rich mix of humor, horror, and angst [and] better than most novels on the bestseller lists" (Boston Sunday Globe), Confessions of a Tax Collector contains an astonishing cast of too-strange-for-fiction characters. But the most intriguing character of all is Yancey himself who -- in detailing how the job changed him and how he managed to pull himself back from the brink of moral, ethical, and spiritual bankruptcy -- reveals what really lies beneath those dark suits and mirrored sunglasses.
A Burning in Homeland
In what can only be described as a tour-de-force of passionate atmospheric storytelling, first-time novelist Richard Yancey had created a finely nuanced narrative that resounds with raw, emotional truths -- a story about the ominous return to a small town in central Florida of a man once sentenced to prison for defending the honor of the woman he loved, about the woman and her husband who both betrayed him, and about a guileless young boy who gets caught up in their web of love, lies, and deceit.
The story of the love between Halley Martin and Mavis Howell is seldom talked about in the tiny town of Homeland, Florida, but in the twenty years since Halley was sent to prison for murdering a rival suitor -- the only murder ever in this small, pious town -- the story has become legend. To seven-year-old Shiny Parker it has become a mystery, something his parents whisper about. He knows that somehow the pretty wife of the local minister is involved, but it is all too confusing for him to sort out.
When the church's parsonage burns, almost killing the minister, only days before the legendary Halley Martin is due to be released from prison, Shiny senses a connection between the events -- as do most residents of the town. But if Haley was still in prison when the house burned, who set the fire...and why?
Passionate love, the betrayal of friendship, hidden letters, a suspicious fire, mystery and revenge -- all are elements of this complex and deeply involving Southern gothic tale.
Alternating among a trio of first person narrators -- Shiny, Mavis, and Halley -- Richard Yancey has created a lush, epic Southern landscape bursting with larger than life characters and rich atmospherics. A Burning in Homeland is both starkly haunting and exquisitely romantic and a masterpiece of dazzling storytelling you will not soon forget.
