Richard Russell Riordan, Jr. ( RIRE-dən; born June 5, 1964) is an American author, best known for writing the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. Riordan's books have been translated into forty-two languages and sold more than thirty million copies in the United States. 20th Century Fox adapted the first two books of his Percy Jackson series as part of a series of films, while a Disney+ adaptation is in production. His books have spawned related media, such as graphic novels and short story collections.
Riordan's first full-length novel was Big Red Tequila, which became the first book in the Tres Navarre series. His big breakthrough was The Lightning Thief (2005), the first novel in the five-volume Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, which placed a group of modern-day adolescents in a Greco-Roman mythological setting. Since then, Riordan has written The Heroes of Olympus, a sequel to the Percy Jackson series; The Kane Chronicles, a trilogy of similar premise focusing on Egyptian mythology; and Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, again a trilogy of similar premise focusing on Norse mythology. Riordan also helped Scholastic Press develop The 39 Clues series and its spinoffs, and penned its first book, The …