Francesca Flores Books in Order

Francesca Flores was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she grew up reading as much fantasy as she could find. That appetite for imagined worlds came early, and so did the urge to make her own.

Flores is a writer, traveler, and linguist. As a young reader, she devoured fantasy books and began writing stories of her own, building the habit that would later become a publishing career.

The stories came first.

Before her debut reached shelves, Flores worked as a corporate travel manager. She started writing Diamond City while doing that job, a fitting beginning for a novel that moves through crowded streets, dangerous routes, and a city shaped by people trying to get somewhere better.

Published in 2020, Diamond City introduced Aina Solís, a young assassin with a blade, a hard-won sense of survival, and little room for mistakes. The book takes place in Kosín, an industrial city where wealth, poverty, outlawed magic, and criminal power all collide. Readers who like tense chases, morally complicated alliances, and fantasy worlds with smoke in the air will find plenty to dig into.

Flores continued Aina’s story in Shadow City. The sequel raises the pressure as Aina tries to hold onto the criminal empire she has claimed while old enemies and a looming civil conflict close in. It keeps the focus on dangerous bargains, loyalty, ambition, and the question of what freedom costs when power is never handed over freely.

Nothing comes easy for her characters.

In 2023, Flores published The Witch and the Vampire, a standalone queer retelling of Rapunzel. It follows Ava, a witch turned vampire and held captive by her mother, and Kaye, her former best friend, a witch trained to hunt vampires. Their journey through a cursed forest mixes monsters, old grief, distrust, and a slow rebuilding of the connection they once had.

Across these books, Flores writes young people who have been pushed to the margins but refuse to stay powerless. Her settings are full of hidden magic, hard choices, and systems that favor the wealthy or well connected. Her protagonists may be fighters, thieves, witches, or vampires, but they are also people trying to protect a home, choose their own future, and decide whom they can trust.

Away from writing and reading, Flores has said she enjoys travel, ballet and jazz dancing, trapeze, contortion, and time in parks and on trails. She has also been associated with San Francisco, a city that fits neatly with the movement, curiosity, and urban energy that run through her work.