Kerri Maniscalco

Kerri Maniscalco is an American author whose Stalking Jack the Ripper series and Kingdom of the Wicked — gothic historical thrillers with a teenage female protagonist — have made her one of the bestselling voices in YA gothic fiction.

Kerri Maniscalco published Stalking Jack the Ripper in 2016, the first of a YA gothic historical thriller series set in Victorian London and featuring Audrey Rose Wadsworth, a young woman who defies social convention to study forensic medicine alongside her uncle. The series places Audrey Rose in investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders, then subsequent Victorian mysteries, in a format that combines historical detail, gothic atmosphere, and romantic tension with a female protagonist who resists the constraints of her era.

The Stalking Jack the Ripper series ran to four books and established Maniscalco’s signature approach: rigorous period research combined with fast-paced thriller plotting and slow-burn romance. Her subsequent series, Kingdom of the Wicked (2020), moved the setting to nineteenth-century Sicily and the subject matter to demonic mythology, following a young woman whose twin sister is murdered in a way that suggests the involvement of one of seven demon princes.

Maniscalco writes with an evident love of the gothic atmosphere — fog, candlelight, Victorian drawing rooms, Sicilian markets — that gives her books a sensory richness beyond what pure plot would require. She also handles the romantic elements with patience, understanding that readers of her genre value the slow burn and the unresolved tension as much as the eventual payoff. Kingdom of the Wicked and its sequels have expanded her readership beyond the Victorian setting of the first series.