Luanne G Smith Books in Order

If you want lush magic and slow-burn mystery: The Vine Witch → The Glamourist → The Conjurer
If you like Victorian occult mysteries: The Raven Spell → The Raven Song
If you want darker wartime fantasy: The Witch's Lens → The Wolf's Eye
If you want fairy godmothers and old Hollywood glamour: The Golden Age of Magic → The Gilded City of Dreams

Luanne G Smith writes historical fantasy that likes to put magic to work in very physical places: vineyards, riverbanks, battlefields, and movie studios. Her books tend to blend folklore, mystery, and romance, but the real hook is often the world itself, a setting that feels shaped by weather, labor, and old superstition. She is best known for The Vine Witch and the connected run of series that followed it.

Her published novel career began with The Vine Witch in 2019. That book became a Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestseller and introduced the pattern many readers now expect from her work: a rich historical backdrop, women with dangerous gifts, and a plot that keeps one foot in enchantment and the other in mystery. It also launched a trilogy that grows wider and stranger with each book.

Smith likes magic that feels lived in, not floated above the world.

In the Vine Witch books, spells cling to grapes, perfume, and old grudges in turn-of-the-century France. With The Raven Spell and The Raven Song, she moves into Victorian London and leans harder into occult mystery, private investigation, and family secrets. The Witch's Lens and The Wolf's Eye shift again, this time toward World War I, where witches, undead threats, and battlefield horror meet in a darker register. The settings change, but the steady interest in power, inheritance, and survival stays put.

One of the pleasures of reading Smith is how quickly a premise locks into place. A vine witch returns from a seven-year curse. A detective wakes up without his memories. A woman with a camera learns she can capture the souls of the dead on film. A young fairy godmother lands in 1920s Hollywood and has to help a stranger find her future. The ideas are clean and memorable, but the stories do not stop at the pitch.

Her more recent books show how comfortable she is moving across moods without losing her voice. The Golden Age of Magic brings in the Fées Gardiennes, a sisterhood of fairy godmothers, and sets Celeste's story against the bright machinery of 1927 Hollywood. The Gilded City of Dreams then carries that world into 1920s Manhattan. Even when the scenery turns glamorous, Smith still builds her books around the same sturdy pleasures: hidden histories, uneasy alliances, a touch of danger, and characters who have to decide what kind of magic they can live with.

She also has a knack for writing women who solve their own problems.

That practical energy matters. Smith's heroines are rarely chosen ones waiting around for fate to notice them. They investigate, bargain, improvise, protect their friends, and make mistakes that cost something. Readers who enjoy fantasy with strong atmosphere often find plenty to love here, but so do readers who want momentum. A murder to solve, a curse to break, a missing person to find, a relic to protect, there is usually a concrete problem pushing the story forward.

Smith lives in Colorado at the base of the Rocky Mountains, where she enjoys hiking, gardening, reading, and finding everyday magic in ordinary life. Her books have been translated into seven languages. That feels fitting. They are transportive without losing touch with the ground, and they invite readers into worlds where history feels close enough to touch and enchantment always has real consequences.