Chloe Gong Books in Order

Chloe Gong was born in Shanghai and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. Her novels move between gang-run historical Shanghai, dangerous fantasy kingdoms, and a future built around virtual reality, but they tend to start with the same pressure point: young people trying to make a life inside systems much bigger than themselves.

She started writing at thirteen. During a middle-school visit to her grandmother in China, she ran out of books and had no internet access, so she began making up a story of her own. That early effort was messy by her own account, but it gave her something better than a finished manuscript: a reason to keep writing.

It stuck.

Gong kept writing through school while reading widely in young adult fiction. She noticed that many of the books available to her centered white American characters, and she wanted to write stories that made room for people and places that felt closer to her own experience.

At the University of Pennsylvania, she studied English and international relations. During the summer before her first year, she began a new manuscript set in 1920s Shanghai. That project became These Violent Delights, her 2020 debut, a Romeo and Juliet-inspired story about Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov, heirs to rival gangs forced to confront a spreading horror in their divided city.

A few books later, the world had grown well beyond that first feud.

Our Violent Ends continues Juliette and Roma's story as Shanghai tips toward revolution. The connected Foul Lady Fortune books shift the focus to Rosalind Lang, an immortal spy navigating 1930s Shanghai, false identities, espionage, and a pretend marriage that becomes much harder to keep simple. The novella collection Last Violent Call catches up with familiar characters through two smaller-scale mysteries.

Gong later moved into adult fantasy with Immortal Longings, set in the kingdom of Talin, where competitors can jump between bodies in deadly annual games. Its sequels, Vilest Things and Eyes of Kings, widen the story from one fight for survival into a struggle over a throne, a country, and the cost of power. Her science-fiction series begins with Coldwire, following two Medan orphans caught between a corporate state and the virtual world people use to escape a damaged planet.

Her books often mix romance with politics, secrets, divided loyalties, and characters who have good reasons to make bad choices. The settings are detailed, but the stakes stay personal: family expectations, old betrayals, the need to belong, and the question of who gets to decide a person's future.

Gong now lives in New York City. Her work has been published internationally, and she was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2024. She still writes the kind of high-pressure stories that began when a bored teenager decided to make her own entertainment.