JC Cervantes Books in Order

If you want myth-packed middle grade adventure: The Storm Runner → The Fire Keeper → The Shadow Crosser
If you want the next step after that: The Lords of Night
If you want romance and family magic: Flirting with Fate
If you want YA fantasy outside the myth books: Fractured Path

JC Cervantes grew up in San Diego, close to the Mexico border, and that in-between feeling still runs through her work. She has talked about being proud of her Mexican heritage while also growing up in a family with Anglo roots, and many of her characters carry that same question of where they belong.

Writing was not the first plan.

Cervantes earned a degree in communication studies from New Mexico State University and built a life in New Mexico, a place that would become central to her fiction. She has said she did not set out to write a novel when she started Tortilla Sun. Her youngest daughter wanted a story about a teddy bear, and that small family request eventually opened the door to a book.

Getting there was not quick. Cervantes has spoken openly about how hard rejection could be, and how stubborn the urge to write remained anyway. When Tortilla Sun finally reached readers, it clicked with people who loved stories about family, place, and a little everyday magic. It also earned a New Mexico Book Award and a Zia Book Award.

Then came the volcano.

With The Storm Runner, The Fire Keeper, and The Shadow Crosser, Cervantes moved into big middle grade fantasy without losing her sense of humor or heart. Those books follow Zane Obispo, a New Mexico kid pulled into a world of Maya and Aztec gods, monsters, prophecies, and underworld bargains. Readers tend to come for the speed and the danger, then stay for Zane, Rosie, Brooks, and Uncle Hondo. The trilogy became a New York Times bestseller and brought Cervantes to a much wider audience.

She kept building from there. The Lords of Night shifts the spotlight to Renata Santiago, a powerful godborn with shadow magic, and shows Cervantes leaning a little darker while keeping the banter and momentum intact. Even when the stakes turn cosmic, her stories are usually anchored by kids who feel lonely, overwhelmed, or underestimated.

Part of what makes her work easy to recognize is the way she pulls old stories into the present tense. She grew up fascinated by Maya gods and magic, and that interest never really left. In her books, myth is not something locked in the past. It shows up in volcanoes, family homes, road trips, ghostly visits, and the lives of kids who still have homework, grief, crushes, and impossible choices.

That balance shows up in her other work too. Flirting with Fate takes family magic in a more romantic direction, with blessings, ghosts, and a heroine who has to decide how much she believes in destiny. Fractured Path heads to 1965 San Francisco and mixes art, inherited bad luck, and a long-buried family curse. Across genres and age groups, Cervantes keeps returning to the same kinds of questions: what people inherit, how family stories shape them, and when they learn to trust themselves.

New Mexico stayed with her.

So did the search for magic in ordinary life. Cervantes's books have been published in more than a dozen countries, and in 2023 she received a New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. She lives in New Mexico with her family and dogs, and even in her wildest fantasy plots, you can feel how much she likes stories rooted in real landscapes, real weather, and families that love hard.