Eric Rickstad Books in Order

If you want to sample his small-town crime series: The Silent Girls → Lie In Wait → The Names Of Dead Girls
If you enjoy standalone psychological suspense: What Remains of Her → I Am Not Who You Think I Am
If you like gritty literary noir: Reap
If you’re interested in timely, issue-driven thrillers: Lilith
If you want high-concept FBI procedurals: The Six → The Five

Eric Rickstad is an American thriller writer whose novels dig into the darkness lurking in small towns, especially across rural Vermont. A New York Times bestselling author, he lives in Arlington, Vermont, with his wife, daughter, and son.(vermontbookshop.com)

He grew up in a small Vermont town where his mother worked at the local hardware store, a place where neighbors lingered to swap stories. Listening to those voices, then discovering writers like Roald Dahl, Stephen King, and Edgar Allan Poe, nudged him toward darker tales of his own.(dailyyonder.com)

As a teenager, he learned how powerful words could be when a grim joke he made about a hunting trip was taken literally and reported to the police, turning a tall tale into a minor real-world scare. After that, he kept the macabre on the page instead of in the cafeteria.(bookseriesinorder.com)

Rickstad studied English at the University of Vermont before earning an MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where he was both a Henry Hoyns and a Corse Fellow. He later taught writing and literature at the University of Virginia, Boston University, and Emerson College, sharing the craft lessons he was still refining in his own work.(partnersincrimetours.com)

Before novels, he focused on short stories and poems, writing whenever he could fit it around day jobs. One “short story” ran so long it became his debut novel, Reap, a backwoods coming-of-age crime tale that went on to be named a New York Times Notable Book.(publishersweekly.com)

Readers often discover him through the Canaan Crime books, including The Silent Girls, Lie In Wait, and The Names Of Dead Girls. Set in the fictional town of Canaan, Vermont, the series follows former detective Frank Rath and investigator Sonja Test as they confront missing teenagers, small-town prejudice, and predators who slip through the justice system.(books.apple.com)

Alongside the series, Rickstad writes standalones that lean hard into psychological suspense. What Remains of Her centers on a reclusive professor whose wife and daughter vanished years earlier, while I Am Not Who You Think I Am traces a man haunted by a childhood note he found beside his father’s body, a novel that was named a New York Times Thriller of the Year.(books.apple.com)

His later work pushes even further into contemporary fears. Lilith grew out of his anger over school shootings and the routines of lockdown drills, following a teacher and mother whose son is grievously wounded and who decides that if leaders will not act, she will.(target.com)

With the Remote novels beginning with The Six, he blends FBI procedure with remote viewing, drawing on conversations with federal agents and a Vermont homicide detective to ground the more uncanny elements in real investigative detail.(books.apple.com)

Rickstad still writes most first drafts in pencil, often outside in the Vermont woods, then revises until the emotional core feels true. However dark his stories get, they stay rooted in everyday people trying to protect the ones they love.(kobo.com)