About the Author: “Holly Black is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy novels, including the Novels of Elfhame, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and her adult debut, Book of Night. She has been a finalist for an Eisner Award and the Lodestar Award, and the recipient of the Mythopoeic Award, a Nebula, and a Newbery Honor. Her books have been translated into 32 languages worldwide and adapted for film and television. She currently lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret library” (Bio from author’s website).
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Sir Morien is a picture book written by Black and Kaliis Smith and illustrated by Ebony Glenn. This book is inspired by Arthurian legends, with Sir Morien, who leaves Africa to find his father, joining other mythological figures, Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot, in their current quest. From the Round Table to the picture book, Holly Black demonstrates her love of mythology.
Holly Black teams up with Tony DiTerlizzi for The Spiderwick Chronicles. The five-book series (that later received three additional books set a few years after the originals) begins when twins, Simon and Jared, and their older sister, Mallory, move into their aunt’s old mansion. There, they find Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide and learn about a world that exists just out of their sight.
The Magisterium series, co-authored with Cassandra Clare, follows a boy named Callum who was warned to never get close to magic. However, when Callum takes the illusive Iron Trial, a test that measures his magical power, he might score high enough to get admitted to the Magisterium school of magic regardless of his father’s protests.
Doll Bones is about three friends: Zach, Poppy, and Alice, who used to play with dolls together. When Poppy tells Zach and Alice that she is being haunted by a china doll made from the bones of a girl who met a terrible fate, they band together to help her. In Poppy’s dreams, the girl threatens to put a curse on them unless they return the doll to the old home of the girl.
The Curse Workers series follows Cassel Sharpe, who comes from a family of curse workers who can change emotions and memories with a touch. This type of work is against the law, and in a family of magic users that turn into con artists, Cassel does not have magic. He is the odd one out in his crooked family. When his perfectly normal life is interrupted, Cassel has to uncover family secrets and unravel a past that he thought he left behind in his childhood.
The standalone, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, is set in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns draw humans in, but never let them go. Vampires were banished to these cities in an attempt to keep the vampirism disease they carry from infecting the world. Tana has an accident that sends her straight into the heart of Coldtown, with allies she doesn’t completely trust and the desire to keep her family safe from vampires.
Heart of the Moors is a standalone for Queen Aurora that takes place in between Disney’s Maleficent and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Aurora has to learn to be a ruler to the Fair Folk in the Moors while falling in love with Prince Phillip. Meanwhile, Maleficent is struggling to move on from the past. The novel provides deeper characterization of both leading women.
Holly Black’s most famous works are set in the world of Elfhame and one such work is The Modern Faerie Tales series. The first book of the series, Tithe, follows Kaye, who after being mysteriously attacked goes back to her childhood home. There she becomes part of a violent struggle for power between two rival kingdoms in the fae world. In the second book, Valiant, a girl named Valeria runs away and ends up with a strange, not-so-human group of squatters in New York. In Ironside, the last book returns to Kaye as she goes on an impossible quest to prove her love in the midst of dangers enveloping her lover’s throne.
The Darkest Part of the Forest shows a different aspect of the world first learned about in The Modern Faerie Tales. Siblings Hazel and Ben live in a town where humans and fae coexist. When a young fae prince who has laid sleeping in a glass coffin for generations disappears, the world goes mad. Hazel and Ben, already too deep in the world of their faerie neighbors having grown up amongst the forest, find themselves going to lengths they never knew existed to survive.
The Folk of the Air trilogy follows a human girl, Jude, who was stolen away from her home as a child and now lives in the High Court of Elfhame. Prince Cardan, the youngest son of the King, is the cruelest faerie in a court that hates humans. When a fight for the throne breaks out, Cardan might be Jude’s only pawn and she will have to risk more than her life in a dangerous attempt to keep her family and the entire court safe.
The Novels of Elfhame duology is set eight years after The Folk of the Air series and tells the story of Oak, Jude’s younger brother, and a runaway Queen named Suren. When Oak saves Suren from a hag, he decides that she is key to his newest mission to free a prisoner in the north. But going north with Oak means that Suren will have to face the horrors of the Court of Teeth and her past within it.
While the list above gives an idea of the tremendous number of works that Holly Black has published, she still has a good amount beyond those mentioned. Black has published an adult novel as well as quite a few short stories. She has also edited several anthologies, written stories for graphic novels, and dabbled in poetry. Every time I find something new by Holly Black, I am amazed by her talent and the work she puts into everything she writes. Black truly is an impactful writer within the literary community.
Hannah Goerndt, Pine Reads Review Writer