Kalayna Price Books in Order

Kalayna Price writes urban fantasy built around the things that make everyday life feel a little less safe: a city alley after dark, an old debt, a body with secrets, or a magical favor that comes with a nasty price. Her books mix mystery investigations with vampires, shapeshifters, witches, fae courts, romance, and a dry sense of humor.

Her first published novel, Once Bitten, arrived in 2009.

Price had been making up stories long before that. She began her first novel at age twelve, and she later earned a BFA in studio art from the University of South Carolina. That visual-art background fits the way her fiction works. Her settings have clear physical details, while magic feels like something characters have to live around, use carefully, and sometimes clean up after.

The early Haven books, Once Bitten and Twice Dead, follow Kita Nekai, a small cat shifter who has run away from her powerful clan. In the human city of Haven, a disaster leaves Kita both hunted and newly undead. The books use that setup for vampire politics, shapeshifter trouble, dangerous bargains, and a heroine who would rather avoid responsibility but keeps getting pulled into the middle of things.

In 2010, Price began the Alex Craft novels with Grave Witch. Alex is a struggling private investigator in Nekros City who can raise shades of the dead and question them. It is useful work, especially for the police. It also costs Alex something every time she does it. Her cases bring her into contact with the fae investigator Falin Andrews, Death himself, and a growing tangle of mortal crime and Faerie politics.

Magic is never just a handy shortcut in these stories.

The Alex Craft series continued with Grave Dance, Grave Memory, Grave Visions, Grave Ransom, Grave Destiny, and Grave War. Across those books, Alex moves from taking individual cases to facing bigger questions about her own heritage, her changing powers, and the uneasy relationship between the human world and Faerie. The mysteries stay central, but the personal stakes keep rising with them.

Price has said that she draws ideas from the world around her, ancient mythology, and classic folklore. That combination shows up in both series. Her characters deal with ghosts, reapers, rogue shifters, old magical rules, and political systems where nobody gives away useful information for free. Readers who like a supernatural mystery with an ongoing cast and some romantic complications will find a natural entry point in her work.

She has also been involved with writer communities and has belonged to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and Romance Writers of America. Outside writing, she has spoken about enjoying reading, painting, photography, and hula-hooping, including fire hooping. It is a fittingly hands-on mix of interests for a writer whose fictional worlds are full of motion, color, and things that can catch fire.