Escaping from Houdini

Kerri Maniscalco is the best-selling author of the young adult Stalking Jack the Ripper a quartet, and the young adult fantasy series, Kingdom of the Wicked.
She was raised by her parents in Hudson Valley, New York. Her father, a retired chiropractor, is Sicilian, and her mother is of "Irish descent with Eastern European and distant Spanish and Jewish roots."
Maniscalco is third-generation American, and she celebrates Italian American traditions. Maniscalco credits her father's anatomy books and sculptures for her interest in forensics, which later led to her inspiration for Stalking Jack the Ripper.
Maniscalco studied Fine Art at a college in New York city before later transferring into Communication Design at F.I.T. For a brief period of time, Maniscalco considered becoming a forensic psychologist, going as far as to take Criminal Justice and Science courses.
Maniscalco credits the maternal side of her family for her love of reading, saying her grandmother instilled it on her mother, who then passed it on to both her and her sister, Kelli. Kerri's bio states that, as children, two of them were often taken to bookstores and libraries on weekends, which is "where she fell in love with stories".
Maniscalco's debut novel, Stalking Jack the Ripper, was the first non-Patterson YA book to be released under Jimmy Patterson Books by Hachette Book Group. It hit #1 on the New York Times Bestsellers list, and received a number of positive reviews. The next three novels in the series also hit the New York Times list upon their releases, earning a number of glowing reviews all on their own. The series also has two novellas, Meeting Thomas Cresswell and Becoming the Dark Prince.