Ransom Riggs is a writer and filmmaker. He attended the Pine View School for the Gifted in Florida. He studied English literature at Kenyon College and studied film at the University of Southern California. His work on short films for the Internet and blogging for Mental Floss magazine got him a job writing The Sherlock Holmes Handbook which was released as a tie-in to the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film. Riggs had collected curious vernacular photographs and approached his publisher, Quirk Books, about using some of them in a picture book. On the suggestion of an editor, Riggs used the photographs as a guide from which to put together a narrative.The resulting book was Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which made The New York Times Best Seller list. One of his other books inspired by old photographs entitled Taking Pictures was published in 2012. The sequel Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss, Peregrime's Children also made The New York Times Best Seller List.