Rodman Philbrick grew up on the coast of New Hampshire and has been writing since the age of sixteen. For a number of years he published mystery and suspense fiction for adults. Brothers & Sinners won the Shamus Award in 1994, and two of his other detective novels were nominees. In 1993 his debut young adult novel, Freak the Mighty, won numerous honors, and in 1998 was made into the feature film The Mighty, starring Sharon Stone and James Gandolfini. Freak the Mighty has become a standard reading selection in thousands of classrooms worldwide, and there are more than three million copies in print. In 2010 Philbrick won a Newbery Honor for The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg.
Lynn Harnett, who was married to Rodman Philbrick, passed away in 2012. She was a talented journalist, editor, and book reviewer, and she had a real knack for concocting scary stories that make the reader want to laugh, shriek with fear, and then turn the page to find out what happens next.