Dan. Brown Books In Order

[Arabella Kochanski]

TheRobert Langdon novels are deeply engaged with Christian themes and historical fiction, and have generated controversy as a result. Brown states on his website that his books are not anti-Christian and he is on a "constant spiritual journey" himself.[4] He states that his book The Da Vinci Code is "an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate" and suggests that the book may be used "as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith."[5]

Daniel Gerhard Brown was born on June 22, 1964, in Exeter, New Hampshire.[6] He has a younger sister, Valerie (born 1968) and brother, Gregory (born 1974). Brown attended Exeter's public schools until the ninth grade.[7] He grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father, Richard G. Brown, was a teacher of mathematics and wrote textbooks[8] from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.[9] His mother, Constance (ne Gerhard), descended from Pennsylvania Dutch Schwenkfelders,[10] and trained as a church organist and student of sacred music.[7] Brown was raised an Episcopalian,[8] and described his religious evolution in a 2009 interview:

I was raised Episcopalian, and I was very religious as a kid. Then, in eighth or ninth grade, I studied astronomy, cosmology, and the origins of the universe. I remember saying to a minister, "I don't get it. I read a book that said there was an explosion known as the Big Bang, but here it says God created heaven and Earth and the animals in seven days. Which is right?" Unfortunately, the response I got was, "Nice boys don't ask that question." A light went off, and I said, "The Bible doesn't make sense. Science makes much more sense to me." And I just gravitated away from religion.[8]

The irony is that I've really come full circle. The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The further you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, "Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science."[8]

Brown's interest in secrets and puzzles stems from their presence in his household as a child, where codes and ciphers were the linchpin tying together the mathematics, music, and languages in which his parents worked. The young Brown spent hours working out anagrams and crossword puzzles, and he and his siblings participated in elaborate treasure hunts devised by their father on birthdays and holidays. On Christmas, for example, Brown and his siblings did not find gifts under the tree, but followed a treasure map with codes and clues throughout their house and even around town to find the gifts.[11] Brown's relationship with his father inspired that of Sophie Neveu and Jacques Saunire in The Da Vinci Code, and Chapter 23 of that novel was inspired by one of his childhood treasure hunts.[12]

After graduating from Phillips Exeter, Brown attended Amherst College where he double majored in English and Spanish. At Amherst, he was initiated into the Psi Upsilon fraternity. He played squash, sang in the Amherst Glee Club, and was a writing student of visiting novelist Alan Lelchuk. Brown spent the 1985 school year abroad in Seville, Spain, where he was enrolled in an art history course at the University of Seville.[11] Brown graduated from Amherst in 1986.[13][14]

After graduating from Amherst, Brown dabbled with a musical career, creating effects with a synthesizer, and self-producing a children's cassette entitled SynthAnimals, which included a collection of tracks such as "Happy Frogs" and "Suzuki Elephants"; it sold a few hundred copies. He then formed his own record company called Dalliance, and in 1990 self-published a CD entitled Perspective, targeted to the adult market, which also sold a few hundred copies. In 1991 he moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as singer-songwriter and pianist. To support himself, he taught classes at Beverly Hills Preparatory School.[15][16]

He also joined the National Academy of Songwriters and participated in many of its events. It was there that he met his wife, Blythe Newlon, who was the academy's Director of Artist Development. Though it was not officially part of her job, she took on the seemingly unusual task of helping to promote Brown's projects; she wrote press releases, set up promotional events, and put him in contact with people who could be helpful to his career. She and Brown also developed a personal relationship, though this was not known to all of their associates until 1993, when Brown moved back to New Hampshire, and it was learned that Newlon would accompany him. They married in 1997, at Pea Porridge Pond, near Conway, New Hampshire.[17]In 1994 Brown released a CD titled Angels & Demons. Its artwork was the same ambigram by artist John Langdon which he later used for the novel Angels & Demons. The liner notes also again credited his wife for her involvement, thanking her "for being my tireless cowriter, coproducer, second engineer, significant other, and therapist".[17] The CD included songs such as "Here in These Fields" and the religious ballad, "All I Believe".[18]

Brown has written a symphonic work titled Wild Symphony which is supplemented by a book of the same name.[20] The book is illustrated by Hungarian artist Susan Batori[21] which feature simple ambigrams for children, while the visuals trigger the corresponding music in an accompanying app.[22] The music was recorded by the Zagreb Festival Orchestra[23] and will receive its world concert premiere by the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra in 2020.[24] On March 30, 2022, it was announced that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Weed Road Pictures will turn Wild Symphony into an animated musical feature film in the vein of Walt Disney's Fantasia, with Brown writing the screenplay and songs, and Akiva Goldsman producing.[25]

He started work on Digital Fortress, setting much of it in Seville, where he had studied in 1985. He also co-wrote a humor book with his wife, 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman, under the pseudonym "Danielle Brown".[28] The book's author profile reads, "Danielle Brown currently lives in New England: teaching school, writing books, and avoiding men." The copyright to the book is attributed to Brown.[29]

In 1996 Brown quit teaching to become a full-time writer. Digital Fortress was published in 1998. His wife Blythe did much of the book's promotion, writing press releases, booking Brown on talk shows, and setting up press interviews. A few months later, Brown and his wife released The Bald Book, another humor book. It was officially credited to his wife, though a representative of the publisher said that it was primarily written by Brown. Brown subsequently wrote Angels & Demons and Deception Point, released in 2000 and 2001 respectively, the former of which was the first to feature the lead character, Harvard symbology expert Robert Langdon.[30]Brown's first three novels had little success, with fewer than 10,000 copies in each of their first printings. His fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, became a bestseller, going to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list during its first week of release in 2003. It is one of the most popular books of all time, with 81 million copies sold worldwide as of 2009.[31][32] Its success has helped push sales of Brown's earlier books.

In 2004 all four of his novels were on the New York Times list in the same week,[33] and, in 2005, he made Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People of the Year. Forbes magazine placed Brown at No. 12 on their 2005 "Celebrity 100" list, and estimated his annual income at US$76.5 million. According to the article published in The Times, the estimated income of Brown after Da Vinci Code sales is $250 million.[34]Brown's third novel featuring Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol, was released on September 15, 2009.[35] According to the publisher, on its first day the book sold over one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the US, the UK and Canada, prompting the printing of 600,000 hardcover copies in addition to the five million first printing.[36]

Brown's promotional website states that puzzles hidden in the book jacket of The Da Vinci Code, including two references to the Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, give hints about the sequel. Brown has adopted a relevant theme in some of his earlier work.[37]

Brown's fourth novel featuring Robert Langdon, Inferno is a mystery thriller novel released on May 14, 2013, by Doubleday.[38] It ranked No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list for the first 11 weeks of its release, has sold more than 1.4 million copies in the US alone.[39]

Characters in Brown's books are often named after real people in his life. Robert Langdon is named after John Langdon, the artist who created the ambigrams used for the Angels & Demons CD and novel. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is named after On a Claire Day cartoonist friend Carla Ventresca. In the Vatican archives, Langdon recalls a wedding of two people named Dick and Connie, which are the names of his parents. Robert Langdon's editor Jonas Faukman is named after Brown's real life editor Jason Kaufman. Brown also said that characters were based on a New Hampshire librarian, and a French teacher at Exeter, Andr Vernet. Cardinal Aldo Baggia, in Angels & Demons, is named after Aldo Baggia, instructor of modern languages at Phillips Exeter Academy.[41]

In interviews, Brown has said his wife, Blythe, is an art historian and painter. When they met, she was the Director of Artistic Development at the National Academy for Songwriters in Los Angeles. During the 2006 lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement in The Da Vinci Code, information was introduced at trial that showed that Blythe did research for the book.[42] In one article, she was described as "chief researcher".[43]

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