Douglas Preston

Author profile

born

Cambridge, Massachusetts, The United States

gender

male

website

http://www.prestonchild.com/

genre

Mystery & Thrillers

About this author

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Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley. Following a distinguished career at a private nursery school--he was almost immediately expelled--he attended public schools and the Cambridge School of Weston. Notable events in his early life included the loss of a fingertip at the age of three to a bicycle; the loss of his two front teeth to his brother Richard's fist; and various broken bones, also incurred in dust-ups with Richard. (Richard went on to write The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, which tells you all you need to know about what it was like to grow up with him as a brother.)

As they grew up, Doug, Richard, and their little brother David roamed the quiet suburbs o...more Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley. Following a distinguished career at a private nursery school--he was almost immediately expelled--he attended public schools and the Cambridge School of Weston. Notable events in his early life included the loss of a fingertip at the age of three to a bicycle; the loss of his two front teeth to his brother Richard's fist; and various broken bones, also incurred in dust-ups with Richard. (Richard went on to write The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, which tells you all you need to know about what it was like to grow up with him as a brother.)

As they grew up, Doug, Richard, and their little brother David roamed the quiet suburbs of Wellesley, terrorizing the natives with home-made rockets and incendiary devices mail-ordered from the backs of comic books or concocted from chemistry sets. With a friend they once attempted to fly a rocket into Wellesley Square; the rocket malfunctioned and nearly killed a man mowing his lawn. They were local celebrities, often appearing in the "Police Notes" section of The Wellesley Townsman. It is a miracle they survived childhood intact.

After unaccountably being rejected by Stanford University (a pox on it), Preston attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied mathematics, biology, physics, anthropology, chemistry, geology, and astronomy before settling down to English literature. After graduating, Preston began his career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York as an editor, writer, and eventually manager of publications. (Preston also taught writing at Princeton University and was managing editor of Curator.) His eight-year stint at the Museum resulted in the non-fiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by a rising young star at St. Martin's Press, a polymath by the name of Lincoln Child. During this period, Preston gave Child a midnight tour of the museum, and in the darkened Hall of Late Dinosaurs, under a looming T. Rex, Child turned to Preston and said: "This would make the perfect setting for a thriller!" That thriller would, of course, be Relic.

In 1986, Douglas Preston piled everything he owned into the back of a Subaru and moved from New York City to Santa Fe to write full time, following the advice of S. J. Perelman that "the dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the freedom to starve anywhere." After the requisite period of penury, Preston achieved a small success with the publication of Cities of Gold, a non-fiction book about Coronado's search for the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. To research the book, Preston and a friend retraced on horseback 1,000 miles of Coronado's route across Arizona and New Mexico, packing their supplies and sleeping under the stars--nearly killing themselves in the process. Since then he has published several more non-fiction books on the history of the American Southwest, Talking to the Ground and The Royal Road, as well as a novel entitled Jennie. In the early 1990s Preston and Child teamed up to write suspense novels; Relic was the first, followed by several others, including Riptide and Thunderhead. Relic was released as a motion picture by Paramount in 1997. Other films are under development at Hollywood studios. Preston and Child live 500 miles apart and write their books together via telephone, fax, and the Internet.

Preston and his brother Richard are currently producing a television miniseries for ABC and Mandalay Entertainment, to be aired in the spring of 2000, if all goes well, which in Hollywood is rarely the case.

Preston continues a magazine writing career by contributing regularly to The New Yorker magazine. He has also written for National Geographic, Natural History, Smithsonisan, Harper's,and Travel & Leisure,among others.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/dougla...(less)

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Douglas Preston's Books

Average rating: 3.94 · 226,381 ratings · 14,007 reviews · 39 distinct works · Similar authors

	Relic (Pendergast, #1) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 avg rating — 31,620 ratings — published 1995 — 57 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast, #3) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 avg rating — 14,632 ratings — published 2002 — 47 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Reliquary (Pendergast, #2) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 avg rating — 14,844 ratings — published 1997 — 47 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Brimstone (Pendergast, #5; Diogenes, #1) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 12,782 ratings — published 2004 — 43 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Book of the Dead (Pendergast, #7; Diogenes, #3) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 12,334 ratings — published 2006 — 43 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Still Life With Crows (Pendergast, #4) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 avg rating — 11,586 ratings — published 2003 — 44 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston, Mario Spezi 3.65 of 5 stars 3.65 avg rating — 12,384 ratings — published 2008 — 32 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fever Dream (Pendergast, #10) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 avg rating — 11,289 ratings — published 2010 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Thunderhead by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 avg rating — 10,331 ratings — published 1999 — 32 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dance of Death (Pendergast, #6; Diogenes, #2) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child 4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 avg rating — 10,511 ratings — published 1999 — 45 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Douglas Preston…

Series by Douglas Preston

Pendergast (12 books)
by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
4.026959155033607 of 5 stars 4.03 avg rating — 148,929 ratings

Helen (3 books)
by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
4.018438329375611 of 5 stars 4.02 avg rating — 21,477 ratings

Gideon Crew (2 books)
by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
3.546625273082672 of 5 stars 3.55 avg rating — 8,697 ratings

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Quotes by Douglas Preston

“It's a very bad habit, but one I find hard to break.”
― Douglas Preston

tags: pendergast

47 people liked it

“The truth shall make you free, but first it will make you miserable.”
― Douglas Preston, Gideon's Sword

25 people liked it

“You think of yourself as an "individual person", with a unique and separate mind. You think you are born and you think you die. All your life you feel separate and alone. Sometimes desperately so. You fear death because you fear the loss of individuality. All this is an illusion. You, he, she, those things around you living or not, the stars and galaxies, the empty space in between- these are not distinct, separate objects. All is fundamentally entangled.”
― Douglas Preston, Blasphemy

18 people liked it

See all Douglas Preston's quotes »

Polls

Voting for the August/September 2012 group read. Voting open until Sunday 8/12.

Broken Harbour/Tana French

41 votes, 15.1%

Creole Belle/James Lee Burke

22 votes, 8.1%

The Cabinet of Curiosities/Douglas Preston

22 votes, 8.1%

Where the Bodies Are Buried/Christopher Brookmyre

16 votes, 5.9%

The End of the Wasp Season/Denise Mina

15 votes, 5.5%

Raven Black/Ann Cleeves

14 votes, 5.1%

No Time for Goodbye/Linwood Barclay

13 votes, 4.8%

The Last Kind Words/Tom Piccirilli

13 votes, 4.8%

Rain Fall/Barry Eisler

13 votes, 4.8%

Joe/H.D. Gordon

11 votes, 4.0%

Mr. Churchill's Secretary/ Susan Elia MacNeal

11 votes, 4.0%

Marker/Robin Cook

10 votes, 3.7%

Killer Instinct/Zoë Sharp

10 votes, 3.7%

Now You See Me/S.J. Bolton

8 votes, 2.9%

Drop By Drop: A Thriller / Keith Raffel

8 votes, 2.9%

Suffer the Children/John Saul

7 votes, 2.6%

Creep/Jennifer Hillier

7 votes, 2.6%

Virginia Creeper/Blaine Pardoe

6 votes, 2.2%

The Twelfth Imam / /Joel C. Rosenberg

5 votes, 1.8%

Death of an Old Git/Andrea Frazer

4 votes, 1.5%

Boston Cream / Howard Shrier

4 votes, 1.5%

The Survival of Thomas Ford/John A.A. Logan

4 votes, 1.5%

The Gigolo Murder/Mehmet Murat Somer

3 votes, 1.1%

And Then She Was Gone/J. Daniel Sawyer

3 votes, 1.1%

The Baptism of Billy Bean/Roger Alan Skipper

2 votes, 0.7%

272 total votes

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Douglas Preston

Author profile

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Polls

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Douglas's Fans (1670)

Douglas Preston

Author profile

combine editionsDouglas Preston's Books

Series by Douglas Preston

Upcoming Events

Quotes by Douglas Preston

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

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Videos

combine editions
Douglas Preston's Books