Jess Haines Books in Order

If you want the core H&W arc: Taken by the Others → Deceived by the Others → Stalking the Others
If you want more H&W after that: Silent Cravings → Forsaken by the Others → Enslaved By the Others
If you want academy fantasy and dragons: Smoke and Mirrors
If you want a shorter urban fantasy setup: Ashes of the Phoenix
If you want quick standalone reads: Swan Song → Kill the Messenger

Jess Haines writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance with vampires, werewolves, magi, and heroines who do not stroll into danger feeling invincible. She often describes herself as a displaced New Yorker, and that fits the mood of her books, which tend to mix city life, sharp humor, and creatures with very bad manners. These days she writes from the Tampa area in Florida.

She likes monsters, but she keeps the people at the center.

As a teenager, Haines fell hard for fantasy through Dungeons & Dragons and the tie-in novels that came with that world, especially the DragonLance books. She has said that her urge to write grew through school newspaper work, creative writing classes, and even roleplaying on AOL. It was an unglamorous training ground, maybe, but it gave her room to practice dialogue, character voice, and the push and pull of scene work.

Before fiction became her public career, she spent years writing technical instructions, internal video scripts, company policy, and other business copy for a private company. She has also written short stories and screenplays. That background matters. Even when her stories are full of vampires or dragons, the storytelling itself usually feels clear, brisk, and easy to follow.

The break into publishing did not happen by magic. Haines has written about revising her manuscript, studying agent advice, and sticking with the query process until she found representation in 2008. That persistence led to a book deal, and her first novel launched the H&W Investigations series in 2010.

Those books made her name. In the H&W world, a human private investigator named Shiarra Waynest gets pulled into an alternate New York full of vampires, werewolves, magi, and competing factions that all want something from her. Readers who click with the series often like that Shiarra is not a ready-made action machine. She is scared, stubborn, funny, outmatched, and forced to keep moving anyway. Books like Taken by the Others, Deceived by the Others, Stalking the Others, Forsaken by the Others, and Enslaved By the Others build that tension into something bigger, mixing monster politics, romance, and detective trouble.

That choice gives the series its pulse.

Haines did not stay in one corner of fantasy, though. With Smoke and Mirrors, she shifted into the hidden magical world of Blackhollow Academy, where young magi need training, credentials, and familiars before adult life will open up to them. With Ashes of the Phoenix, she started a new thread built around Lyra Adams, a rare books dealer who is abruptly turned into a phoenix and has to rely on an ex she has every reason to distrust. Different setup, same pleasure in watching ordinary life collide with magical disaster.

Across her work, a few patterns keep showing up. She likes supernatural settings that sit close to the everyday world. She likes characters who are in over their heads, whether that means a private investigator facing vampire politics, a young mage trying to graduate, or a woman discovering immortality the hard way. And she likes relationships that are useful, messy, and not automatically safe just because attraction is involved.

She also seems to enjoy a little sideways humor. In older interviews, she mentions coffee, chocolate, karaoke, bad movies, and a small menagerie of animals. Those details feel right for the books, which can get dark but rarely lose their sense of fun.

If you come to Jess Haines for romance, fantasy, or creature trouble, you will probably find all three. If you stay, it is usually because her characters have to earn their way through the danger, one bad decision and one hard-won alliance at a time.