V.E. Schwab is the pen name of Victoria Elizabeth Schwab, an American writer born in California in 1987, who has spent a decade making some of the most atmospheric fantasy on the shelf — the Shades of Magic trilogy, the morally crooked Villains books, and the standalone that turned her into a household name, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
We'll be honest with you: she sits at the darker, more bittersweet end of our shelves rather than the hot-cocoa middle. But if your idea of comfort runs to candlelit longing, old bargains and beautiful melancholy rather than warm rooms full of cake, she's exactly the author to curl up with on a rainy night.
Her work falls into a few strands — connected series and self-contained standalones — so if you're wondering which are her best books, where to start, or what order to read them in, the short answer is that you can begin almost anywhere. We'd point you at the standalones below.
On our shelves
Bittersweet BargainCenturies-Spanning
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
A woman trades her soul for endless life, only to be cursed so that everyone she meets forgets her the moment she leaves the room. Then, three hundred years on, a man in a bookshop remembers her name. Tender, melancholy, and quietly furious about being unseen. Read it when you've felt overlooked and want company in it.
Where to start
Start with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. It asks nothing of you — no series to commit to — and it's her most-loved and most accessible book: an atmospheric, character-driven, melancholy-romantic story that makes the gentlest doorway into her work before you wander into darker rooms like Vicious.
V.E. Schwab’s books
A young woman in 1714 France makes a Faustian bargain to live forever, and is cursed so that everyone she meets forgets her the moment they part — until, three hundred years later in New York, one man remembers. The one to start with.
On our shelves →
The opening of the Shades of Magic trilogy. Kell is one of the last magicians who can travel between parallel Londons, and a smuggled artefact drags him and the sharp-tongued thief Lila into a fight to save the worlds.
The first of the Villains books: two gifted college roommates research how near-death experiences can grant superhuman powers, then become bitter, vengeful enemies. A story with no clear hero, and all the better for it.
A gothic young-adult standalone. Orphan Olivia Prior arrives at her family's crumbling estate, Gallant, and finds a ruined mirror-house beyond the garden wall, guarding a dangerous threshold.
Her dark 2025 standalone, braiding together three women across five centuries who are bound by hunger and vampirism. It's set in the same universe as The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and best read after it.
Set years after the original Shades of Magic books, this opens a new trilogy, returning to the parallel Londons as familiar and new characters face a fresh threat to the balance of magic.
The first of the Monsters of Verity young-adult duology, set in a divided city where acts of violence literally create monsters, and a human girl and a monster boy are forced together.
Good questions
She writes in strands. Shades of Magic goes A Darker Shade of Magic (2015), A Gathering of Shadows (2016) and A Conjuring of Light (2017), then a sequel trilogy from The Fragile Threads of Power (2023). The Villains books run Vicious (2013), Vengeful (2018) and Victorious (2026). The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Gallant and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil all stand alone.
It's a self-contained standalone, with no series to commit to. Her 2025 novel, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, is set in the same universe and is best read after it.
Her most recent is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (2025), which topped the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists and won a Goodreads Choice Award in the fantasy category. A third Villains novel, Victorious, is due in 2026.
Darker than most of our shelves — bittersweet, gothic and morally tangled rather than cosy. Addie LaRue is the gentlest, melancholy-romantic doorway; Vicious and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil go to bleaker places.
If it's the atmospheric, bittersweet, faintly gothic mood you're after, our Strange & Beautiful shelf is the place to browse — that's where Addie LaRue lives, alongside others in the same gorgeous, melancholy key.
Same author. She writes her adult and YA fantasy as V. E. Schwab, and her middle-grade fiction — the Cassidy Blake / City of Ghosts series — as Victoria Schwab.
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