Upon graduation, Peter moved to New York where he worked as an actor and freelance copy editor for eight years before becoming an author. Peter was said to have been classmates with Bill Gates in college before he dropped out and founded the company Microsoft. 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. 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. As a ghostwriter he has been published under the name A. 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. 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. Vespers, for which he wrote the third book, The Dead of the Night.

This book served as an introduction to a six-book 39 Clues sequel entitled Cahills Vs.

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. 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. Peter Duncan Lerangis (born 1955, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American author of children's and young adult fiction, best known for his Seven Wonders series and his work on the 39 Clues series.

The Sword Thief by Peter Lerangis