Karen Chance Books in Order
Browse Karen Chance books in order, with quick summaries, crossover notes, and easy starting points for the Cassie, Dorina, and Lia stories.
Last updated: July 10, 2026
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Publication Order
29 books
Touch the Dark
by Karen Chance
2006
Cassie Palmer can see the future and talk to ghosts, which makes her valuable to all the wrong people. When the vampire mobster she escaped comes hunting again, she has to seek protection from the vampire Senate, at a steep price.
Claimed By Shadow
by Karen Chance
2007
Newly named heir to the Pythia, Cassie is stuck with power she barely understands and enemies on every side. Vampires, mages, and fey all want control, while a magical claim from Mircea makes her personal life even messier.
Buying Trouble
by Karen Chance
2008
Claire works at a shady New York magical auction house and knows better than to attract Fey attention. Then a Lord of the Fey notices her, and Claire discovers the rarest item on the block is Claire herself.
Embrace the Night
by Karen Chance
2008
Cassie wants one thing, freedom from the spell binding her to Mircea. To break it, she has to chase the Codex Merlini into the past, and risk bringing back magic that could threaten far more than her own heart.
Midnight's Daughter
by Karen Chance
2008
Dorina Basarab is a dhampir who survives her rages by hunting monsters more dangerous than she is. When her father asks her to help recapture Dracula, she has to team up with the master vampire Louis-Cesare and face the one thing that truly scares her.
Curse the Dawn
by Karen Chance
2009
Being Pythia has not made Cassie safer, it has made her a bigger target. With the Vampire Senate demanding alliances and Apollo himself coming after her, she has to fight for her life and the world's.
Death's Mistress
by Karen Chance
2009
Back in Brooklyn, Dory hopes life will calm down after Dracula's fall. Instead she gets pulled into a search for a Fey relic, a missing woman, and a killer targeting members of the vampire Senate.
Hunt the Moon
by Karen Chance
2011
Cassie should be preparing for her coronation, not racing through time to stop sabotage before it starts. When an enemy strikes at her mother before Cassie is even born, the battle for the Pythian throne turns deeply personal.
Fury's Kiss
by Karen Chance
2012
Dory wakes in a strange lab with missing memories and a case gone very wrong. To learn what was done to her, she has to battle fallen angels, twisted science, and a terrifying new breed of vampire.
Tempt the Stars
by Karen Chance
2013
Cassie is still learning what it means to be a half-goddess Pythia, and the learning curve is brutal. Between a dangerous burglary, a friend in terrible trouble, and acolytes who could unleash disaster, her day only gets worse.
Masks
by Karen Chance
2014
In fifteenth-century Venice, newly made vampire Mircea Basarab is a fallen prince trying to survive among predators. Service, seduction, and an old vendetta pull him into a hunt for an assassin and the truth behind the city's glittering masks.
Reap the Wind
by Karen Chance
2015
Cassie dives through time to rescue John Pritkin after his soul is scattered across the ages. With Pritkin's dangerous father in tow and timeline guardians closing in, even a simple rescue could end in catastrophe.
Lover's Knot
by Karen Chance
2017
A powerful vampire has vanished, and Dory would happily ignore it if Louis-Cesare were not missing too. Her search sends her back into old rivalries and older memories that may hold the answer.
Ride the Storm
by Karen Chance
2017
Cassie has spent the series playing catch-up as the supernatural world's chief seer. Now ancient powers are rising, war is brewing, and she may be the only one who can pull enough allies together to stop disaster.
Dragon’s Claw
by Karen Chance
2018
A grim Queens crime scene tells Dory someone has built a weapon that can kill vampires far too easily. Following the clues sends her across the world after a clever murderer with plans for a much larger body count.
Shadow's Bane
by Karen Chance
2018
Now part of the Vampire Senate, Dory investigates a vanished fey who may have been sold into deadly underground fights. The trail leads to slavers, bigger conspiracies, and more trouble with Louis-Cesare than one case should reasonably contain.
Brave the Tempest
by Karen Chance
2019
Cassie has only been chief seer for a few months, but the supernatural world is already splintering around her. To stop catastrophe, she must hold together an uneasy alliance of vampires, mages, and demons before it tears itself apart.
Siren's Song
by Karen Chance
2019
John Pritkin is still reeling from a demon curse when he finds himself in a city under siege by enthralled war mages. If he cannot break the spell, they may destroy themselves and everyone around them.
Skin Deep
by Karen Chance
2019
War mage Lia de Croissets stumbles into a nightmare when Weres start turning up skinned and her lover disappears. Her best lead is a living dragon tattoo on her own body, and it has plans of its own.
Queen’s Gambit
by Karen Chance
2020
At last Dory seems to have a place in her father's world, then a magical device tears her human and vampire natures into separate bodies. Both halves have to survive long enough to uncover the truth about their past.
Shatter the Earth
by Karen Chance
2020
As time begins to split between Earth and Faerie, Cassie finally gets the advantage she never asked for. A war between worlds is coming, and she, Mircea, and Pritkin will need more than power to survive it.
Ignite the Fire: Inferno
by Karen Chance
2022
Kidnapped in Faerie by the light fey king Aeslinn, Cassie is offered a brutal bargain involving John Pritkin's life. To save him and stop Zeus, she may have to challenge the king of the gods himself.
Junk Magic
by Karen Chance
2022
War mage instructor Lia de Croissets is handed a grim new job when street drugs start awakening monstrous powers in ordinary people. To stop an ancient plague, she has to whip a pack of magical outlaws into something like a team.
Time's Fool
by Karen Chance
2023
Long before Dory became a senator, she was an outcast monster hunter. In Elizabethan England, she, Kit Marlowe, Gillian Urswick, and a young Mircea are drawn into a mission that could save the world or help destroy it.
Fortune's Blade
by Karen Chance
2024
Dory and Dorina, once two halves of one dhampir, are now separate at the worst possible moment. With one half hunted through Faerie, Dory and Louis-Cesare race through deadly courts and family secrets that could reshape the war.
Hijack the Seas: Seismic
by Karen Chance
2024
John Pritkin is fighting for a light fey throne, and Cassie knows losing is not an option. Helping him survive court politics would be hard enough without an old enemy showing up with revenge on the agenda.
Hijack the Seas: Tsunami
by Karen Chance
2025
Thrown fifty years into a ruined future, Cassie finds Earth under the gods' control and her own power gone. Her only chance is to reach her heir, outwit a pantheon, and get back in time to undo it all.
Rogue Elements
by Karen Chance
2026
When daughters of powerful werewolf leaders start vanishing, disgraced war mage Lia de Croissets is the obvious investigator and nobody's first choice. Her mixed heritage gives her the best shot at finding the kidnappers, if it does not get her killed first.
Weird Magic
by Karen Chance
2026
Someone is targeting Were leader Sebastian Arnou, and the fight has already split the Were world in two. As the Black Circle closes in, Lia and her new clan become central to a mystery that could change the whole war.
Where should I start?
If you want the core Cassie story: Touch the Dark → Claimed By Shadow → Embrace the Night
If you prefer a tougher, more combat-heavy lead: Buying Trouble → Midnight's Daughter → Death's Mistress
If you want newer War Mage and Were politics: Junk Magic → Weird Magic
If you already know the world and want side novels: Masks → Siren's Song
Author bio
Karen Chance grew up in Orlando, Florida, in a place she has joked is the natural home of make-believe. Before she became known for urban fantasy, she spent years studying history, earned a Ph.D., and lived in a string of very different places, including France, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and New Orleans. That mix of travel, old stories, and academic training left a clear mark on her fiction.
She did not come to writing through some neat childhood plan. Teaching came first. Then a chronic health problem pushed her to rethink what kind of work she could keep doing, and fiction became the next path. She has talked about starting to write for a very practical reason, she needed to make a living, but that practical beginning may be part of why her books feel so driven. They move.
Then Touch the Dark arrived in 2006.
That book introduced Cassie Palmer, a clairvoyant who can talk to ghosts, slip through time, and get dragged into supernatural politics whether she wants to or not. Readers who click with Chance usually do so for a few familiar reasons. The pace is fast. The magical systems are busy in a fun way. And the heroines are rarely the calmest person in the room, but they are often the one still standing when everything falls apart.
Two years later she opened another door into the same shared world with Midnight's Daughter. Dorina Basarab is rougher, bloodier, and more openly dangerous than Cassie, and that is very much the point. She is a dhampir, half human and half vampire, with a violent streak and a long memory. Fans who prefer their urban fantasy heavier on combat and darker family secrets often start there and stay there.
She likes characters who do not fit cleanly anywhere.
That pattern runs through a lot of her work. Cassie is shoved into power before she is ready. Dorina is caught between worlds and loyalties. Lia de Croissets, who takes center stage in Junk Magic and Weird Magic, comes at the same universe from the War Mage Corps side, with Were politics, magical crime, and more team-based tension. Even Masks, her Mircea Basarab novel set in fifteenth-century Venice, is about survival, reinvention, and the long shadow of the past.
Part of the appeal is that the supporting cast never feels like background furniture. Mircea Basarab, John Pritkin, Louis-Cesare, and a wide circle of vampires, mages, fey, and ghosts all arrive with their own agendas. Chance's books like to mix breakneck action, messy alliances, buried history, and romance that is never simple. Her training in history helps, too. When the stories jump centuries, or pull old politics into modern danger, they feel lived in instead of decorative.
Chance has been writing full time since 2008, and she still seems happiest building outward from the world she started with Cassie. There are main novels, side novels, novellas, and short stories, all linked closely enough to reward deep reading without shutting out newer readers. She lives in Florida now, where she writes full time and keeps one eye on hurricane season. It fits her books. They come in fast, hit hard, and rarely stay small for long.
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