Wizard Writers: Jim Butcher + 31 More
Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series is full of magic—plus ghosts, faeries, vampires, demons, priests, werewolves, knights, and the like.
On Monster Complex, you’ll find a wide assortment of authors who write urban fantasy—combining the supernatural with the world out your window. While “wizards” and stories about magic have been with us for centuries—think Grimm’s Fairy Tales, or the legends of King Arthur and Merlin—they have only exploded in literature in the past 30-odd years. Below are more than two-dozen authors who write about magic, magic practitioners, and those who live in a world of magic. Click on their names to find out about them, and for links to find out even more...
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What Is “Urban Fantasy”?
Sometimes, it can be a bit tricky to parse whether or not something is a work of “urban fantasy” and/or a related category like horror, paranormal romance, or magical realism. In a nutshell, urban fantasy is a sub-category of fantasy which infuses monsters or the supernatural into a contemporary or everyday setting. So—vampires, werewolves, magical beings, and the like. In these stories, the fantastical elements might operate in secret or they might operate out in the open and are known to the public.
In a way, you can track the origins of the urban fantasy category back for several decades. Depending on whom you ask, milestones include Manly Wade Wellman’s occult detective stories in the 1940s, the Chicago-set TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker in the 1970s, the supernatural comedy films Ghostbusters and Teen Wolf in the 1980s, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (film and TV) and the X-Files in the 1990s.
What Authors Write Urban Fantasy?
Urban fantasy has taken publishing by storm—and has become one of the most popular literary categories today. You can find many urban fantasy authors included among our big list of 200 horror authors, and you can find urban fantasy series among our big list of 200 monster book series.
Got a favorite urban fantasy author you think we should cover? (We know there are lots more. We just said so.) Name your favorite urban fantasy authors in the comments below!
Wizard Writers: Jim Butcher + 31 More
JIM BUTCHER
Jim Butcher is a martial arts enthusiast whose résumé includes a long list of skills rendered obsolete at least two hundred years ago, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher is the author of the Dresden Files series, featuring Chicago’s first (and only) Wizard P.I. Butcher has also written the Codex Alera novels and the Cinder Spires series, as well as the superhero novel Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours.
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SHWETA TANEJA
Shweta Taneja is a bestselling speculative fiction author from India who has written several published novels and graphic novels. She is a leading voice in feminist science fiction and fantasy, most known for her series the Anantya Tantrist Mysteries.
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SEANAN MCGUIRE
Seanan McGuire is the author of the October Daye urban fantasies, the InCryptid urban fantasies, and several other works both stand-alone and in trilogies or duologies. McGuire also writes zombie novels under the pseudonym “Mira Grant.” In her spare time, Seanan records CDs of her original music. She is also a cartoonist, and draws an irregularly posted autobiographical web comic, “With Friends Like These...,” as well as generating a crazy number of art cards.
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MARLON JAMES
Marlon James is the author of the Dark Star trilogy, blending myth, fantasy, and history to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. The first book in the series, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, was named one of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. And Buzzfeed says that the second book—Moon Witch, Spider King—is “even more brilliant than the first.” James is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, The Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction as well as an NAACP Image Award. His first novel John Crow’s Devil was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice.
FAITH HUNTER
Faith Hunter is an urban fantasy writer who fell in love with reading in fifth grade, and best loved SF, fantasy, and gothic mysteries. Her Skinwalker series—set in a modern-day world inhabited by humans, vamps, and other things that go bump in the night—features Jane Yellowrock, a Cherokee skinwalker who tracks, hunts, and kills rogue-vampires for a living. That is, until she takes a gig working for the Master of the City of New Orleans.
Another series of Hunter’s, The Soulwood novels, is a spinoff from the Skinwalker series featuring a cult escapee who has a deadly magic of her own. She is also the author of the Rogue Mage novels, a dark, urban fantasy series, featuring a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic, alternate reality, urban fantasy world. Her Junkyard Cats series is a “near future” SF series of novellas.
And if that weren’t plenty of fiction, Hunter also puts out books under her pen name Gwen Hunter—writing action adventure, mysteries, and thrillers.
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JESSICA CAGE
Jessica Cage is the award winning, USA Today best-selling author of the Djinn Rebellion series (set in a world run by magical beings), the Siren series (about a mermaid whose mother is a Siren and father is a warlock), the High Arc Vampires series (about a hidden race of vampires), and more. “My dream is to write the stories I grew up loving with characters who look like me,” Cage says. “I can remember as a little girl wondering why there were no black vampires, werewolves, and fairies in the stories I read. Well, now there are because I’ve written them! This is my passion and I’m overjoyed to be able to share it with the world.”
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BENEDICT JACKA
Benedict Jacka is best known for his Alex Verus series, featuring a mage with a dark past who runs a magic shop in London. Jacka became a writer almost by accident, when at nineteen he sat in his school library and began writing in the back of an exercise book. Since then he has worked for the civil service, studied philosophy at Cambridge and been a bouncer, but has always found the time to keep writing.
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DANIEL JOSE OLDER
Daniel Jose Older is the bestselling author of Star Wars official books, The Shadowshaper Cypher series, and more. He won the International Latino Book Award, and has been nominated for the Kirkus Prize, the Mythopoeic Award, the Locus Award, the Andre Norton Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
In Older’s Bone Street Rumba series, Carlos Delacruz is one of the New York Council of the Dead’s most unusual agents—an inbetweener, partially resurrected from a death he barely recalls suffering, after a life that’s missing from his memory. He thinks he is one of a kind—until he encounters other entities walking the fine line between life and death.
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ILONA ANDREWS
“Ilona Andrews” is actually husband-and-wife writing team Ilona Gordon and Andrew Gordon, who write urban fantasy and romance fiction together. They have co-authored several bestselling series, including the #1 NYT bestselling urban fantasy of Kate Daniels, set in a magical version of Atlanta where the world has suffered a magic apocalypse. They have also authored the rustic fantasy of the Edge, and paranormal romance of Hidden Legacy.
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TOMI ADEYEMI
Tomi Adeyemi was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people. She is a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Nigerian-American writer and storyteller. After graduating from Harvard University with an honors degree in English literature, she studied West African mythology, religion, and culture in Salvador, Brazil.
The first novel in her Legacy of Orisha series, Children of Blood and Bone, debuted at #1 on The New York Times Bestseller list and is being developed into a movie by Disney’s Fox & Lucasfilm. Its highly anticipated sequel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, also debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list.
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MIKE CAREY and M.R. CAREY
Publishing works under two names, Mike Carey has penned supernatural thrillers in the Felix Castor series (starring a freelance exorcist), and as M.R. Carey wrote the novel The Girl with All the Gifts (adapted into a movie), and the epic post-apocalyptic fable The Rampart Trilogy. Under the name Mike Carey his run as a comics writer has included Hellblazer, the Sandman spin-off title Lucifer, plus his work various X-Men titles, the British comics SF anthology 2000 AD, and his creator-owned titles Crossing Midnight and The Unwritten. He also has written several games, radio plays, and TV and movie screenplays.
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KRISHNA UDAYASANKAR
Krishna Udayasankar is a fantasy writer who has published a number of books. Beast is an urban fantasy where a female detective is dragged into the terrifying world of werelions post a triple homicide in Mumbai. Immortal features is an immortal character who is a drunken professor solving a mystery.
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PATRICIA BRIGGS
Patricia Briggs is the bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson series and Alpha and Omega series. She has short stories in several anthologies, as well as a series of comic books and graphic novels based on her Mercy Thompson and Alpha and Omega series. Moon Called was the first of her signature series about Mercy—the non-stop adventure left readers wanting more and word of this exciting new urban fantasy series about a shape-shifting mechanic spread quickly. Briggs’ Alpha and Omega series is set in the same world as the Mercy Thompson novels.
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NALO HOPKINSON
Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-born Canadian speculative fiction writer and editor who often infuses her fiction with Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling. Her books include the novels Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, and The New Moon’s Arms, and her collection Skin Folk. She was the curator of Six Impossible Things, an audio series of Canadian fantastical fiction on CBC Radio One. She entered Neil Gaiman’s Sandman universe with the comic book limited-series House of Whispers (DC Comic), a story that took readers from the bayou to the Dreaming.
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RICHARD KADREY
Richard Kadrey is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Devil Said Bang, Metrophage, and Butcher Bird. Other works include collaborative graphic novels and over 50 published short stories. His Sandman Slim series follows a man who escapes from Hell to take revenge on the people that killed his lover—and now wanders a dark Los Angeles haunted by vampires and demons. After 11 years of combat as a gladiator against demons in Hell, he is more than prepared to fight back.
ZORAIDA CORDOVA
Zoraida Cordova is the acclaimed author of more than a dozen novels and short stories, including the Brooklyn Brujas series, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge: A Crash of Fate, and The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina. In addition to writing novels, she serves on the Board of We Need Diverse Books, and is the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Vampires Never Get Old, as well as the cohost of the writing podcast, Deadline City. She writes romance novels as Zoey Castile. Zoraida was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and calls New York City home. When she’s not working, she’s roaming the world in search of magical stories.
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JIM C. HINES
Jim C. Hines is the author of the Magic ex Libris series, the Princess series of fairy tale retellings, the humorous GOBLIN QUEST trilogy, and the Fable Legends tie-in BLOOD OF HEROES. His latest novel is TERMINAL PEACE, book three in the humorous science fiction Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse trilogy. He’s an active blogger, and won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. His short fiction has appeared in more than 50 magazines and anthologies.
MAURICE BROADDUS
Maurice Broaddus wrote the urban fantasy trilogy The Knights of Breton Court, which rebuilds The King Arthur myth in a dramatic environment—as the street hustler King tries to unite the crack dealers, gangbangers, and the monsters lurking within them to do the right thing. Broaddus has also written such novels as the steampunk Pimp My Airship and the middle grade detective series The Usual Suspects. His fiction has also appeared in Magazine of SF&F, Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, and Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs. As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Fireside Magazine, and Apex Magazine. His gaming work includes writing for the Marvel Super-Heroes, Leverage, and Firefly role-playing games as well as working as a consultant on Watch Dogs 2.
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HARRY CONNOLLY
Harry Connolly is the author of the Twenty Palaces series—in fact, the first in the series, Child of Fire, was named to Publishers Weekly’s Best 100 Novels of 2009. Blending fantasy and mystery, the Twenty Palaces series revolves around a man who works for a mysterious organization of sorcerers in a world where magic is real, along with demons, spirits, and werewolves. Connolly has also written the apocalyptic epic fantasy trilogy The Great Way, the pacifist urban fantasy A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark, and the 30’s pulp adventure game tie-in King Khan.
N.E. CONNEELY
N.E. Conneely is the author of the series A Witch’s Path, which follows a witch who works for the local police. She is also the author of the Earth Born Cycle, and the Kelsey Pine: Urban Necromancer Series. The author explained to A New Look on Books why she loves to write fantasy:
“Growing up I read so many novels with fantasy elements and I fell in love with the genre. Not only does it transport the reader to a wonderful new world, but it allows you to enjoy adventure without living through the hardships. Plus, many of the problems characters face in a fantasy world mirror ones each of us face in life. To me, that gives the reader a way to process a problem that they may struggle with in real life in a much less threatening way.”
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SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA
Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a Nigerian author of fantasy, science fiction, and general speculative work. His books include the media tie-in Stranger Things: Lucas on the Line, which offers a revealing portrait of Stranger Things fan favorite Lucas Sinclair; Son of the Storm, the first book in the epic fantasy trilogy The Nameless Republic; and the godpunk fantasy novel David Mogo Godhunter, which won the 2020 Nommo Ilube Award for Best Novel. Okungbowa’s shorter works have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies and have been nominated for various awards.
SIMON R. GREEN
Simon R. Green is the bestselling author of dozens of SF, fantasy, and mystery novels. He’s the author of several novel series, including the Secret Histories series, the Nightside series, the Ghost Finders series, the Deathstalker series, the Forest Kingdom series, and the Ishmael Jones mysteries.
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S.V. SUJATHA
S.V. Sujatha is a graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme, where she eventually found her calling as a writer and storyteller. The Demon Hunter of Chottanikara is her debut novel, born out of her love for the Mother Goddess and passion for Indian mythology.
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P.N. ELROD
P.N. Elrod is best known for THE VAMPIRE FILES, an urban fantasy series about vampire private investigator Jack Fleming, whose first case is to solve his own murder. Her other books include JONATHAN BARRETT: GENTLEMAN VAMPIRE (series), THE HANGED MAN, and a three novel series co-written with Nigel Bennett, who played LaCroix on the TV series Forever Knight. She is also an award-winning editor with several collections featuring stories by New York Times best-selling urban fantasy authors.
BEN AARONOVITCH
Ben Aaronovitch writes the critically-acclaimed, internationally bestselling Peter Grant/Rivers of London urban fantasy series, featuring a detective and apprentice wizard who solves magical crimes in the city of London. In his early days as a writer, he wrote for Doctor Who and the low-budget space soap Jupiter Moon.
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SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, which reimagines of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico. She also wrote Velvet Was the Night, Mexican Gothic, and many other books. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows (which was republished Cthulhu’s Daughters).
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DEBORAH WILDE
Deborah Wilde is the author of the Jezebel series, inspired by the idea of a struggling private investigator who discovers a Star of David tattoo on her body that she has no memory of getting, leading her to a world of magic and her greatest mystery—herself. “Thematically, this series has become about grief and letting go of anger,” the author told Monster Complex. “Which may sound quite serious, but I promise you, it’s super snarky and very sexy with a fun homage to Sherlock Holmes that runs through the series and a deadly trickster figure in the Queen of Hearts, ruler of a magic black market.”
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VICTOR LAVALLE
Victor LaValle is the author of a short-stories, novels, and comics. His books include fantasy-horror novella The Ballad of Black Tom, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for best novella. He also wrote The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, and The Changeling.
KEVIN HEARNE
Kevin Hearne is the author of the New York Times bestselling series the Iron Druid Chronicles, the Seven Kennings trilogy that begins with A PLAGUE OF GIANTS, and co-author of the Tales of Pell series with Delilah S. Dawson.
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SUKANYA VENKATRAGHAVAN
Sukanya Venkatraghavan’s first novel, Dark Things, was on Amazon India’s Most Memorable Books of 2016. She is the editor of Magical Women, a feminist, fantasy anthology. She started her film journalism career with Filmfare and was also the entertainment editor at Marie Claire.
DAN WILLIS
Dan Willis is the author of the Arcane Casebook series, featuring a down-and-out detective making a living in a magical, 1930’s New York. Willis is also the award-winning author of the long-running DragonLance series of fantasy novels. His Confederacy series follows a Yankee engineer and a spy as they take on the forces of the South in a steampunk twist on the Civil War. And The Flux Engine takes place in a Steampunk wild west where a young man seeks to reclaim his mysterious heritage only to find that people are willing to kill to possess it.
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Dieselpunk Detective Noir Q&A: Dan Willis (Arcane Casebook)
KIM HARRISON
Kim Harrison is best known as the author of the New York Times #1 best selling Hollows series, but she has written more than urban fantasy and has published over two-dozen books spanning the gamut from young adult, accelerated-science thriller, several anthologies, and has scripted two original graphic novels set in the Hollows universe. She has also published traditional fantasy under the name Dawn Cook. Kim is currently working on a new Hollows book between other, non related, urban fantasy projects.
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