Most Recommended Books

Track reading, wishlists & new-book alerts

Get
Skip to content
Share:

Katherine Addison Books in Order

Explore Katherine Addison books in order, including Sarah Monette titles, with short summaries, series background, and tips on where to start.

Last updated: June 11, 2026

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases (at no extra cost to you).

View

Publication Order

Sort:

32 books

Mélusine

by Sarah Monette

2005

Wizard Felix Harrowgate falls from power when a magical catastrophe destroys his reputation and his sanity. Joined to thief and former assassin Mildmay Foxe, he flees a corrupt city and uncovers darker secrets than either of them expected.

The Virtu

by Sarah Monette

2006

Felix wants to return to Mélusine and restore the Virtu, the power source whose destruction ruined his life. Mildmay follows reluctantly, knowing the city holds grief, old masters, and new terrors waiting for them both.

A Companion to Wolves

by Elizabeth Bear

2007

Young nobleman Isolfr is chosen to become a wolfcarl, bonded to a giant telepathic wolf. That honor drags him into a brutal northern war, and forces him to rethink duty, love, and what kind of man he will be.

The Bone Key

by Sarah Monette

2007

This linked collection follows shy museum archivist Kyle Murchison Booth through ghostly encounters, old grudges, and unnerving little mysteries. The stories are quiet, elegant, and creepy in exactly the right way.

The Mirador

by Sarah Monette

2007

Felix is back among the wizards of the Mirador, but power never stays simple in Mélusine. While Mildmay tries to keep him safe, spies, rival sorcerers, and dangerous loyalties turn the city into a trap.

Corambis

by Sarah Monette

2009

Exiled and accused of heresy, Felix and Mildmay enter Corambis expecting judgment and find rebellion instead. To stop an ancient machine and a political disaster, the brothers must face new dangers and the future they never planned for.

Shadow Unit 1

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

The FBI's Anomalous Crimes Task Force handles the cases ordinary profilers cannot explain. This opening volume introduces Stephen Reyes and his team as they hunt killers altered by the anomaly, in stories that mix procedure, horror, and ensemble drama.

Shadow Unit 2

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

More gamma cases pull the team deeper into a world where strange abilities and violent trauma feed each other. The investigations stay sharp, but the real hook is watching the unit's trust begin to form under pressure.

Shadow Unit 3

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

When Chaz Villette disappears while visiting a house tied to his past, Shadow Unit faces its most personal case yet. The search becomes a brutal race against a gamma who knows exactly how to break people.

Shadow Unit 4

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

Season two opens with the unit still shaken by what happened to Chaz. New anomaly cases force everyone back to work before they have healed, and the return to the field proves almost as dangerous as the monsters.

Shadow Unit 5

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

Two linked cases push Shadow Unit close to collapse. Bad calls, lingering trauma, and Chaz's struggle with severe PTSD make this one less about catching monsters than surviving the cost of the job.

Shadow Unit 6

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

The team is splintered when fresh investigations and a shocking abduction force them to regroup. For once Stephen Reyes is not the one pulling strings, and that shift makes the whole unit feel newly exposed.

Shadow Unit 7

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

Old wounds keep bleeding into new cases as the unit tries to find its footing again. The procedural engine is still there, but this volume leans harder into fear, trust, and the uneasy bonds holding the team together.

Shadow Unit 8

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

Fresh hunts collide with crucial backstory about the people who built Shadow Unit in the first place. Monsters still stalk the edges, but the deeper tension comes from history, loyalty, and what the job has already cost.

Shadow Unit 9

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

Each new anomaly case exposes another crack in the team. This installment keeps the investigations moving fast, while the emotional suspense comes from watching experienced agents edge closer to their limits.

Shadow Unit 10

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

The cases are deadly, but the bigger danger may be the wear and tear inside the unit itself. This volume digs into trust, damage, and what happens when impossible work becomes normal.

Somewhere Beneath Those Waves

by Sarah Monette

2011

A wide-ranging short story collection that moves through fantasy, horror, myth, and stranger territory. The pieces vary in setting and scale, but they share Monette's feel for outsiders, grief, and sharp emotional turns.

The Tempering of Men

by Elizabeth Bear

2011

The troll war may be over, but peace does not last long in Iskryne. As Isolfr and the wolf pack build a new hall, rivalries, invading men, and changing loyalties threaten the fragile order they fought to win.

Shadow Unit 11

by Elizabeth Bear

2012

A string of hard cases ends in a devastating blow for Shadow Unit. Grief and unfinished business reshape the team, forcing everyone to keep hunting even as the loss changes how they move through the world.

Shadow Unit 12

by Elizabeth Bear

2012

In the wake of tragedy, the unit keeps working because there is no clean way to stop. These stories balance new gamma investigations with the slower, harder work of carrying on.

Shadow Unit 13

by Elizabeth Bear

2013

The pressure keeps climbing as Shadow Unit tackles cases that throw different members into the spotlight. Big consequences are brewing, but the series never loses sight of the smaller personal fractures underneath.

Shadow Unit 14

by Elizabeth Bear

2014

Old enemies, bad memories, and fresh anomaly cases start converging at once. By this point the series feels like a long television season nearing its endgame, tense, messy, and very hard to put down.

Shadow Unit 15

by Elizabeth Bear

2014

The final volume brings Shadow Unit's long arcs to a head. It still delivers eerie investigations and weird crimes, but the deepest payoff is watching the survivors decide who they are after everything that came before.

The Goblin Emperor

by Katherine Addison

2014

Maia, the half-goblin youngest son of the emperor, has spent his life in exile. When his father and three brothers die in an airship crash, he is thrust onto the throne and into a court full of enemies.

An Apprentice to Elves

by Elizabeth Bear

2015

Alfgyfa has grown up in the Wolfhall, but Iskryne's rules leave little room for a girl like her. Sent to the elf matriarch Tin as apprentice and ambassador, she steps into a tense world of diplomacy, danger, and forbidden possibility.

The Cobbler's Boy

by Elizabeth Bear

2018

Fifteen-year-old Christopher Marlowe wants a scholarship that will get him away from his brutal father. When the man who could help him is murdered, Kit is pulled into a fast-moving historical mystery of secrets, danger, and first love.

The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

2020

In an alternate 1880s London, Dr. Doyle falls in with the Angel of the Crows, a brilliant investigator with a very strange city to police. Angels, vampires, werewolves, and Jack the Ripper make the familiar story delightfully uncanny.

The Witness for the Dead

by Katherine Addison

2021

Thara Celehar can speak with the recently dead, and in Amalo that gift keeps dragging him toward trouble. What begins as quiet clerical work becomes a layered investigation into murder, corruption, and the city's buried pain.

The Grief of Stones

by Katherine Addison

2022

A murdered marquise sends Celehar into one of his most tangled cases yet. Following the trail into a school for foundling girls and the city's past, he finds cruelty, secrets, and losses that cut close to home.

A Theory of Haunting

by Sarah Monette

2023

Kyle Murchison Booth is sent to notorious Thirdhop Scarp to expose an occult charlatan and protect a museum heiress. Instead, he walks into a beautifully eerie house with a long memory and very active ghosts.

The Orb of Cairado

by Sarah Monette

2025

Disgraced historian Ulcetha Zhorvena makes his living inventing pedigrees for fake artifacts. When an old friend's death leaves behind a puzzle, he is pulled back to the university that cast him out and toward a chance at justice.

The Tomb of Dragons

by Katherine Addison

2025

Celehar has lost the gift that once defined him, but duty refuses to let him go. As cemetery secrets, murder, political unrest, and dragons close in, he must decide who he is when certainty is no longer available.

Where should I start?

If you want hopeful court fantasy: The Goblin EmperorThe Witness for the DeadThe Grief of StonesThe Tomb of Dragons
If you want darker, denser secondary-world fantasy: MélusineThe VirtuThe MiradorCorambis
If you want fantasy mysteries in the same world: The Witness for the DeadThe Grief of StonesThe Tomb of Dragons
If you want gothic or gaslamp mystery: The Angel of the CrowsThe Bone KeyA Theory of Haunting
If you want wolf-bonded epic fantasy: A Companion to WolvesThe Tempering of MenAn Apprentice to Elves

Author bio

Katherine Addison is the pen name Sarah Monette uses for some of her fiction, but the sensibility behind both names is easy to spot. Her books are full of people trying to do decent things inside damaged systems, whether the setting is a haunted museum, a brutal fantasy city, or an imperial court built on ritual and fear.

She was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and grew up in a place with an unusually strange history. Oak Ridge was one of the secret cities of the Manhattan Project, which feels oddly fitting for a writer so interested in hidden structures, buried histories, and the cost of power.

She started writing when she was twelve.

Monette studied at Case Western Reserve University, then went on to earn an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has joked that none of those degrees turned out to be especially useful for her day job or her fiction, but the wide reading behind them shows up on the page. Her books are deeply built, but they never feel dry.

Her first novel, Mélusine, arrived in 2005 and introduced one of the pairings readers still talk about most, the damaged wizard Felix Harrowgate and the streetwise Mildmay Foxe. Those books, later collected as the Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet, are darker and sharper than her Katherine Addison novels, with tangled loyalties, body horror, addiction, and political ruin all mixed into the fantasy. Around the same period, she also wrote the stories later gathered in The Bone Key, which follow the anxious archivist Kyle Murchison Booth through elegant, unnerving ghost stories.

She also likes company. With Elizabeth Bear, she wrote the Iskryne books, beginning with A Companion to Wolves, a cold-weather epic about warriors bound to giant telepathic wolves. The collaboration fits her strengths nicely, big stakes outside, bruised people inside.

Then came The Goblin Emperor, the book that brought the Katherine Addison name to a much wider audience. Maia, the half-goblin youngest son who becomes emperor after a catastrophe, could have walked into a much crueler story. Instead, Monette wrote a political fantasy where kindness matters, and readers responded. The novel won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards.

She stayed in that world for The Witness for the Dead, The Grief of Stones, and The Tomb of Dragons, shifting the focus from the throne room to the streets of Amalo and the overworked, honorable Thara Celehar. She has also taken clear pleasure in bending other traditions to her will, as in The Angel of the Crows, a strange, atmospheric reworking of Sherlock Holmes in an 1880s London full of angels, vampires, and werewolves. Whatever name is on the cover, readers tend to come for the same things, intricate social worlds, wounded but memorable protagonists, and stories that make room for mercy without pretending darkness is not real.

Now she lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with her spouse, cats, and books, and she teaches in Ashland University's low-residency MFA program.

Different name, same writer, same sharp eye for lonely people finding their way.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

Comments

Did we miss something? Have feedback?

Help us improve this page by sharing your thoughts

We only use your email to notify you about replies.

All comments are moderated.

Discover and track your reading on the go

Track your reading, manage wishlists, and get notified when new books are added.

All 32 Katherine Addison Books in Order (Complete List 2026)