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.
V. E. Schwab remains one of the most popular and acclaimed fantasy authors writing today, a versatile storyteller whose imaginative, atmospheric novels have earned a passionate following across both adult and young-adult fiction. Writing as V. E. Schwab for older readers and Victoria Schwab for younger ones, she has built a reputation for inventive premises, richly drawn worlds, and emotionally resonant characters, becoming a defining voice in contemporary fantasy. Her work combines the immersive world-building the genre demands with a literary sensibility and a deep concern for character, ambition, and identity that has won her wide admiration.
Schwab’s breakthrough adult work, the Shades of Magic trilogy beginning with A Darker Shade of Magic, established her gift for vivid world-building and propulsive storytelling. The series imagines parallel Londons — Red, Grey, White, and Black — connected by rare magicians who can travel between them, and it combines adventure, intrigue, and memorable characters in a richly realised magical universe. The trilogy became a cornerstone of her reputation and a favourite among fantasy readers, demonstrating the inventiveness and atmosphere that define her work.
Schwab reached an even wider audience with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, a haunting, romantic novel about a young woman who makes a Faustian bargain for immortality at the price of being forgotten by everyone she meets. Spanning centuries and blending fantasy with literary fiction, the novel explores memory, art, identity, and the longing to leave a mark on the world. Its enormous popularity, fuelled by enthusiastic online readers, brought Schwab a vast new readership and confirmed her ability to fuse high-concept fantasy with genuine emotional depth.
A hallmark of Schwab’s fiction is the strength of her central concepts. She excels at the irresistible premise — a girl cursed to be forgotten, a world of parallel Londons, ordinary people who develop extraordinary and dangerous abilities — and she builds emotionally rich stories around these striking ideas. This gift for the compelling hook, combined with her atmospheric prose and her attention to character, makes her novels both immediately enticing and lastingly resonant, drawing readers in with a fascinating idea and holding them with genuine feeling.
Schwab is drawn to morally complex characters and themes, often exploring power, ambition, monstrousness, and the blurred line between hero and villain. Her Villains series, beginning with Vicious, examines characters with extraordinary abilities whose moral status is deeply ambiguous, interrogating what it means to be a hero or a monster. This fascination with the grey areas of morality and identity gives her work a thoughtful, probing quality, and her characters’ struggles with who they are and who they wish to become lend her fantasies real emotional and ethical weight.
Schwab moves with ease between adult and young-adult fiction and across subgenres, from epic fantasy to contemporary stories with a speculative edge to darker, more gothic material. This versatility, and her willingness to experiment with form and tone, keeps her work varied and surprising, and it has allowed her to build readerships across different audiences. Whatever the register, her novels are united by their imaginative ambition, their atmospheric richness, and their deep investment in character, marking her as a writer of considerable range.
V. E. Schwab has become one of the most beloved fantasy authors of her generation, admired for her inventiveness, her atmospheric storytelling, and the emotional depth beneath her high-concept premises. For newcomers, A Darker Shade of Magic is the natural gateway to her adult fantasy, while The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue offers a more standalone, literary entry point. For readers seeking imaginative, character-driven fantasy with striking premises and genuine feeling, Schwab is among the most rewarding and distinctive voices in the genre today.
Much of Schwab’s success has been driven by the passionate community of readers who champion her work online, sharing their love of her worlds and characters and propelling titles such as The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue to enormous popularity. This grassroots enthusiasm reflects the deep emotional connection her books inspire, and it has made her one of the defining authors of the social-media reading era. With each new release eagerly anticipated and her body of work steadily expanding across genres and audiences, Schwab has secured a lasting and growing place among the most beloved fantasy authors writing today, beloved for the imagination and heart that define everything she writes.
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
Across five centuries, three women refuse to stay dead. V.E. Schwab weaves the lives of three queer vampires — from sixteenth-century Spain to modern London — into a hungry, sweeping novel about appetite, freedom, and the long shadow of an immortal life.
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
Seven years after the Shades of Magic trilogy, the four Londons are uneasy. A rebellion stirs, a new Antari emerges, and old favorites return as V.E. Schwab launches a sweeping sequel series about who deserves power and what it costs to hold the worlds together.
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)
by V.E. Schwab
An orphan who can see the dead is summoned to a crumbling family estate where a wall divides the living world from a hungry shadow realm. V.E. Schwab crafts a hauntingly atmospheric gothic fantasy about belonging, grief, and the things that wait behind locked doors.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)list
If Schwab's haunting story of a woman cursed to be forgotten enchanted you, these magical, atmospheric novels of memory, time, and longing hit the same nerve.
guide
Where to start with V.E. Schwab — whether to begin with A Darker Shade of Magic, Vicious, or The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. A complete reading guide.
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.