About the Authors

Carli and Criswell Freeman are a daughter-father mystery-writing team from Nashville, Tennessee.

Carli was a Nation Merit Scholarship recipient who graduated from Fordham University (Lincoln Center campus). She currently lives in Hoboken, New Jersey and works in New York City. For more about Carli, visit her at CarliFreeman.com.

Criswell is a Doctor of Clinical Psychology. In 1993, he published his first book and founded a publishing company that he and his business partner sold several years ago. In addition to the Mystery Ryders, Criswell has hundreds of titles to his credit and over 30 million books in print. He continues to self-help, inspirational, and Christian-themed books for Smith-Freeman Publishing, a company that he and his partner, Ron Smith, founded in 2016.

A photograph of Carli and Criswell Freeman

How the Series Began

One night, 9-year-old Carli Freeman and her mom were reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle aloud. They were having so much fun that Criswell had an idea: “I think Carli and I could write kids’ books, too.”

Fast forward two years. Carli and her dad completed and self-published the first three Mystery Ryder books as a homeschool project. They shared those books with family and friends (who asked for more stories). The series has grown to 8 titles, with more adventures on the way soon.

It started in house, literally.