Wendelin Van Draanen Books In Order

Publication Order of Sammy Keyes Books

Publication Order of Shredderman Books

Publication Order of The Gecko and Sticky Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Wendelin Van Draanen is an American author. She has always loved reading, and her mother taught Wendelin to read at a young age. You could say that books have always been a part of her life. She remembers reading with her father and her brothers where her father would read them stories while they cuddled up around him.

Van Draanen describes herself as a tomboy when growing up. She enjoyed being outside and having fun and adventures. She actually did not decide to be a writer until she was an adult. She found the experience of writing a screenplay concerning family tragedy to be a cathartic one, and it was then that she decided to write novels for adults, later trying her hand at writing books for children too.

She finds that her readers are one of her most valued rewards for writing. Van Draanen recounts that a little girl came up to her and said that she changed her life, saying that you can’t have a better experience as an author than that. She wants to impart to her readers that they have the chance and choice to steer their own way in the world and show that individuality can be a great strength and you can do whatever you set your mind to.

She is the author of the Sammy Keyes mysteries. The first book was published in 1998 and the last of the eighteen books, Sammy Keyes and the Kiss Goodbye, was published in 2014. She is also the author of the Shredderman series, with four books in the series, as well as the Gecko and Sticky series. Van Draanen has also written several independent stand-alone fiction novels, including How I Survived Being a Girl in 1997 to Wild Bird in 2017. She wrote a non-fiction novel, Ricky Martin, in 2004.

Van Draanen also won the Edgar Allen Poe Award in the category of Best Children’s Mystery in 1999. Her book Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy was also up for a CA Young Reader Medal in 2002. She has books that are published in seven different languages and resides in California along with her adoring husband and two sons. She enjoys reading, writing, going running, and listening to her favorite type of music, rock and roll.

Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief is the debut book from this exciting mystery genre series from Wendelin Van Draanen. The main character is, of course, Samantha Keyes, and she is a young girl who lives with her grandmother at the Heavenly Hotel and fights crime. Her Grams, as she calls her, always warned her that using those binoculars all the time was going to get her into some hot water. And you know what, her grandmother is right– as usual.

In fact, Sammy is watching a crime that is in progress with her binoculars as the book opens. The man has an open purse in one hand a big fat wad of cash clenched tightly in the other. When he sees that Sammy has been witnessing him the whole time, he turns and runs. It turns out that he has stolen four thousand dollars from Madame Nashira, an astrologer that Sammy is acquainted with. Sammy isn’t going to let this guy get away with this if she can help it.

When Sammy goes to the police about the burglar, she isn’t too surprised to find that they don’t have any time to hear her story out further. Once she explains that she saw a man with money and black beard, black glasses, and black gloves, they just don’t believe her. It was just like when she tried to explain the situation where she didn’t break her friend Heather’s nose to the Vice Principal of her school, V.P. Caan., and back then he didn’t believe her story either. Sammy is used to authority figures dismissing her, but that doesn’t mean she is going to put up with this.

Sammy knows she’s not a liar, and she’s determined to prove it and clear her name and make everyone feel silly for not listening to her. She knows what she saw, she knows what went down, and she’s going to use her best investigative skills in order to try and prove that to the world. Check out this book and see whether Sammy can catch the thief and recover that money for the astrologer!

The sequel to this first book in the Sammy Keyes series is titled Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man. When Sammy comes upon a bad Halloween situation when she collides with a skeleton at a party while he was making a getaway, she knows something is happening right then and there! Sammy is also the person to discover a Frankenstein that has been tied to a chair and has his head twisted around. Someone out there is just a little bit too into this spooky holiday, it seems.

But what would a Frankenstein possibly have in his possession that a skeleton could want? Sammy is determined to find that out. She’s using her head to figure out what went down that Halloween night and what someone could even want to do this for. As she digs into the details of the case, she’s beginning to discover that maybe this skeleton is only the beginning. There are a lot of people out there with skeletons in their closet.

It turns out that people don’t just wear masks on Halloween, and some people are desperate to keep the masquerade up. With all of the disguises and the faking going on, how can Sammy find out who the real killer is? With a few skeletons in a closet of her own, Sammy has plenty to do and still has a few tricks up her sleeve left.

She will need all of her resources in order to figure out who this crazy person is. As the grudges come up and the various suspects get ruled out, Sammy feels like she is closing in on this mysterious masked man and getting closer every step of the way. Pick up this exciting sequel to the first Sammy Keyes mystery that will have you turning the page to find out what happens.