Darren Shan

Darren Shan is the pen name of Darren O'Shaughnessy (born 2 July 1972), an Irish author of horror fiction for young readers, best known for The Saga of Darren Shan, published in the United States as Cirque du Freak. He was born at St Thomas' Hospital in London, moved to Limerick in Ireland at the age of six, and still lives there.

He studied sociology and English at Roehampton before his first book, the adult novel Ayuamarca, appeared from Orion in February 1999; it was later reissued as Procession of the Dead and became part of The City Trilogy. His first children's book, Cirque du Freak, was published by HarperCollins in the UK and Ireland in January 2000. It opened a twelve-book saga, issued between 2000 and 2004, about a schoolboy who becomes a half-vampire and assistant to the vampire Larten Crepsley. Later series include The Demonata (ten books), the four-book prequel The Saga of Larten Crepsley (2010 to 2012), Zom-B (twelve books, 2012 to 2016) and the self-published Archibald Lox (2020 to 2022). He also writes adult fiction as Darren Dash. The first three saga books were combined into the 2009 film Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, directed by Paul Weitz, and a manga version ran from 2006 to 2009. His official site gives worldwide sales of over 30 million copies.

For collectors

The key title is the first UK edition of Cirque du Freak (HarperCollins, January 2000), which was issued as a paperback; in the United States the saga was published by Little, Brown under the Cirque du Freak name. A full run of the saga means twelve UK first editions issued between 2000 and 2004, and his adult debut Ayuamarca (Orion, 1999) came out a year before his first children's book.