Laurie Forest Books in Order

If you want the full timeline: Wandfasted → Light Mage → The Black Witch → The Iron Flower
If you want the main series first: The Black Witch → The Iron Flower → The Shadow Wand → The Demon Tide → The Dryad Storm
If you want the prequels in one print volume: The Rebel Mages → The Black Witch → The Iron Flower
If you just want to try Laurie Forest: The Black Witch → The Iron Flower

Laurie Forest writes big, emotionally charged fantasy, but her path to fiction was anything but tidy. She lives deep in the backwoods of Vermont, and the image she often shares is simple and memorable: a wood stove, strong tea, and stories full of dryads, dragons, and wands. She is best known for The Black Witch Chronicles, the YA fantasy series that made her a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author.

Before she was publishing novels, Forest was working as a dentist, and when her debut arrived she was still balancing writing with a dental practice. By her own account, she did not come out of a writing program or spend years plotting a career as an author. She was a math and science person, majored in math, loved reading, and only later found her way into writing.

Fantasy came to her a little later than it does for many writers.

One spark was very domestic. Forest has said she finally picked up the Harry Potter books because her daughters kept recommending them, and once she started, she tore through the series. Another spark was more political and personal. Watching friends fight for marriage equality in Vermont in 2009 pushed her to think hard about prejudice, tradition, and the stories people tell themselves about who belongs. Those thoughts turned into a character sketch about a world where certain people are feared for no good reason, and that sketch kept growing until it became Erthia.

She built those early pages in the middle of regular life. Forest has talked about writing in parking lots while her four daughters were at music lessons, sports, and other activities. That detail feels right for her books. However large the worldbuilding gets, there is usually something recognizably human underneath it, a young person trying to make sense of the rules they inherited, a family bond under strain, or a hard choice made before anyone feels ready.

Her breakout title, The Black Witch, introduced Elloren Gardner, a young woman who looks like her legendary grandmother but seems to have none of her power. Readers who connect with the book usually talk about more than the magic. They remember the uneasy way Elloren has to question her own upbringing once she reaches Verpax University. The Iron Flower pushes the story into open rebellion and war, while The Shadow Wand, The Demon Tide, and The Dryad Storm keep widening the cast, the danger, and the moral pressure on everyone involved.

She does not write small fantasy.

The prequels matter too. Wandfasted and Light Mage, later collected in print as The Rebel Mages, show the earlier lives and choices that shaped the main series. Readers who click with Forest usually like the same mix of things: a large fantasy world, slow-burn romance, found family, political tension, and characters who have to unlearn fear before they can act with courage. Her stories return again and again to prejudice, identity, power, loyalty, and the cost of waiting too long to see another person clearly.

She still lives in Vermont, close to the woods that color her public image and, very likely, some of her imagination too. It is a fitting setup for the writer of a long fantasy series about prophecy, war, and the wild force of the natural world.