American · b. 1987
Locus Award finalist, multiple bestseller lists
V.E. Schwab is an American fantasy author whose The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and A Darker Shade of Magic have made her one of the most popular writers working in commercial fantasy.
V.E. Schwab (who also writes as Victoria Schwab for younger readers) has built an extraordinarily productive career in commercial fantasy, publishing more than twenty books and establishing herself as one of the genre’s most consistently popular voices. A Darker Shade of Magic opens her Shades of Magic trilogy, set in parallel Londons with varying relationships to magic, and combines world-building inventiveness with a genuinely enjoyable adventure plot. Kell, a rare magician who can travel between the Londons, and Lila, a thief from a magicless Grey London, make an appealing pair, and Schwab balances action and atmosphere with more skill than most commercial fantasy manages.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is her most ambitious and personal work: the story of a young woman in eighteenth-century France who makes a deal with a dark god to live forever, with the price that no one will ever remember her. The novel alternates between Addie’s three-hundred-year life and a contemporary storyline in which she meets, inexplicably, a man who remembers her. It is a meditation on memory, legacy, and the question of what a life means if it leaves no trace, and it is Schwab’s most emotionally complex work.
Schwab is sometimes criticized for a certain sameness of prose style and for plotting that prioritizes momentum over depth, and these are fair observations. But her books are reliably absorbing, and at her best — in Addie LaRue — she writes with genuine feeling.
by V.E. Schwab
The Shade of Essen Tasch has fallen, and a darkness worse than the black stone threatens all three Londons. Kell, Lila, Rhy, and Holland must confront an enemy powerful enough to consume worlds — and the cost of stopping it may be more than any of them can pay.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)
by V.E. Schwab
A young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets — until she finds a man who remembers her.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)
by V.E. Schwab
A rare magician who can travel between parallel Londons teams up with a street thief to prevent a dark power from destroying all the worlds.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)
by V.E. Schwab
Four months after the events of the first book, Kell is trapped in Red London, confined by King Maxim after the near-catastrophe of the black stone. Lila Bard is somewhere on the seas, pursuing her own ambitions. When the Essen Tasch — a magical tournament held every four years — draws competitors from all three Londons, their paths converge again.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)
by V.E. Schwab
Five years after Vicious, Victor Vale is still evading capture and hunting Eli, while a new ExtraOrdinary named Marcella Riggins rises with destruction at her fingertips and an agenda of her own. Three storylines converge in Schwab's expansion of the Villains universe — a world where everyone with powers has reasons to use them.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)
by V.E. Schwab
Victor Vale and Eli Ever were college roommates and best friends — until their thesis research on near-death experiences led them to discover how to grant humans extraordinary powers. Ten years later, Victor has escaped from prison with one goal: to find the man who put him there and kill him. A superhero story told from the villain's perspective.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)
by V.E. Schwab
Six months after This Savage Song, Kate and August are in different cities, changed by what they survived. A new kind of monster — one that neither side of Verity created — emerges, and the only way to face it requires both of them to confront what they're becoming. The Monsters of Verity duology concludes.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)
by V.E. Schwab
In Verity, violence creates monsters — literally. Kate Harker is the ruthless daughter of the man who runs half the city by selling monster protection. August Flynn is a Sunai, a monster who feeds on souls — and who desperately wants to be human. When they become unlikely allies, the line between predator and prey disappears.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)Disclosure: Amazon links on this page are affiliate links. If you purchase through them we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.