Carrion City Books in Order

Carrion City is a shared vision from Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw, set in a version of New York where the subway tunnels and office towers hide as many gods and monsters as commuters. At the center of it all is Julie Crews, a freelance magician and psychic operative who relies on drugs, favors, and sheer nerve to make rent.

In The Dead Take the A Train, Julie scrapes by doing ugly work for rich clients who do not want to get their hands dirty. Banishing demons from penthouses, cleaning up occult messes, and trying to drink enough to sleep through the memories is just her day to day. Things get complicated when her best friend Sarah turns up on her doorstep running from an abusive husband and needing protection that ordinary cops cannot provide.

Julie’s solution is desperate and very on brand. She reaches for a shortcut, summoning an avenging power in the hope of buying herself a new life and a safer future for Sarah. Instead she cracks something far older and hungrier. An archangel with its own cold idea of justice arrives, elder things start paying attention, and the city’s magical underworld tilts toward catastrophe.

Kadrey and Khaw mix supernatural noir with cosmic horror. The New York of Carrion City has dive bars for cultists, corporate mages who treat rituals like contracts, and subway lines that can take you to places no map admits exist. Julie moves through this world like a punk sorcerer private eye, trading insults with gods and trying to keep her moral compass from spinning apart.

The books lean into body horror, black humor, and the grind of trying to hold onto friendships when addiction, debt, and apocalypse keep getting in the way. Julie is sharp, messy, often wrong, and easy to root for, especially when she stumbles through genuine moments of tenderness amid all the carnage.

If you are coming in fresh, start with The Dead Take the A Train. It introduces Julie, Sarah, and the broader Carrion City landscape, setting up the eldritch conspiracies and personal entanglements that the rest of the series is designed to explore.