Megan Shepherd Books in Order
Browse Megan Shepherd books in order, with quick summaries, linked series pages, and simple tips on where to start with her Gothic, fantasy, and horror novels.
Last updated: June 8, 2026
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Publication Order
16 books
The Madman's Daughter
by Megan Shepherd
2013
In Victorian London, Juliet Moreau learns her disgraced father may still be alive and travels to his remote island with Montgomery and the mysterious Edward. What she finds is a nightmare of human-animal experiments, divided loyalties, and terrible family truths.
Her Dark Curiosity
by Megan Shepherd
2014
Back in London, Juliet tries to rebuild her life after escaping her father's island, but a killer marked by three clawlike slashes starts hunting people close to her. As her own illness worsens, she must chase a cure and face the past she thought she had buried.
A Cold Legacy
by Megan Shepherd
2015
Juliet flees to a strange estate on the Scottish moors with Montgomery, Lucy, Balthazar, and a dying Edward, hoping for safety. Instead she finds secret passages, old experiments, and a new test of how far she'll go to save the people she loves.
The Cage
by Megan Shepherd
2015
Cora Mason wakes in a bizarre enclosure where desert, jungle, and empty town sit side by side, and four other teens are trapped with her. Their captors are aliens, and the cage is a human zoo.
The Hunt
by Megan Shepherd
2016
After a failed escape, Cora and her friends are split up and dropped into even harsher roles inside the Kindred's world, from safari attractions to scientific study. To survive, Cora must weigh freedom against a dangerous alliance with Cassian.
The Secret Horses of Briar Hill
by Megan Shepherd
2016
While living in a wartime hospital, young Emmaline discovers winged horses hidden in the mirrors and a wounded white horse in the garden. To protect him from a sinister Black Horse, she must find color and courage in a very gray world.
The Gauntlet
by Megan Shepherd
2017
Escaping the station only leads Cora and her friends into a brutal new world, where slavery, interspecies politics, and a high-stakes competition stand between them and freedom. Winning the Gauntlet may save humanity, or break Cora first.
Grim Lovelies
by Megan Shepherd
2018
Anouk is a Beastie, an animal enchanted into a girl and bound to serve a witch in Paris, until her mistress is murdered and Anouk is blamed. She has three days to find the real killer before she and her friends lose their human forms.
Midnight Beauties
by Megan Shepherd
2019
Anouk wants to become a witch so she can save her friends, who are trapped back in animal form after a disastrous battle. But in the world of the Haute, power comes with bargains, betrayal, and a price she may not be able to pay.
The Lore of Crow Cullom
by Megan Shepherd
2019
After Crow Cullom is murdered, Death offers her one slim chance to win her life back: a deadly game of hide-and-seek. It is a short, sharp paranormal tale with fairy-tale chill.
Dog Star
by Megan Shepherd
2021
On the streets of Moscow, a stray dog named Laika is taken into the Soviet space program and paired with a lonely girl named Nina. Their friendship brings warmth and hope to a story shaped by science, secrecy, and the Space Race.
Malice House
by Megan Shepherd
2022
When artist Haven Marbury clears out her late father's remote seaside house, she finds a secret manuscript that seems to call monsters into the world. As locals circle and grisly deaths mount, grief, art, and horror become tangled together.
Midnight Showing
by Megan Shepherd
2023
Haven Marbury is now both hunter and hunted as she follows her family's curse from the California desert to old Hollywood haunts. Murders, monsters, and shifting loyalties push the Malice story into darker and stranger territory.
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
by Megan Shepherd
2023
This novelization retells Jack Skellington's discovery of Christmas Town and his disastrous plan to bring Christmas to Halloween Town. It keeps the charm, danger, and melancholy of the original story while giving Sally and Jack more room on the page.
Hour of the Pumpkin Queen
by Megan Shepherd
2025
A year after marrying Jack, Sally is still learning how to be queen of Halloween Town when a botched potion demonstration hurls her and her apprentice Luna into Time Town. To get home, she must untangle a plot that has thrown Halloween Town out of time.
Shadow Over the Pumpkin Queen
by Megan Shepherd
2026
When storms roll over Halloween Town and people begin disappearing, Sally realizes the dark enemy she never finished with is finally striking back. Her search for Jack leads her into Shadow Town, where a hidden prince and old secrets threaten everything she loves.
Where should I start?
If you want Gothic YA with classic monster vibes: The Madman's Daughter → Her Dark Curiosity → A Cold Legacy
If you want survival sci-fi: The Cage → The Hunt → The Gauntlet
If you want magical fantasy with witches and Paris glamour: Grim Lovelies → Midnight Beauties
If you want spooky adult horror: Malice House → Midnight Showing
If you want Nightmare Before Christmas stories: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas → Hour of the Pumpkin Queen → Shadow Over the Pumpkin Queen
Author bio
Megan Shepherd grew up in Brevard, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where her family ran an independent bookstore. Books were part of daily life, but writing novels was not the obvious plan at first. She has said she felt more pulled toward travel, languages, and the wider world than toward a straight line into publishing.
That interest took her to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied International Studies. After college she joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in a small village in Senegal. While there, she worked with a local elementary school to collect oral folktales and turn them into an illustrated book for students, and that project helped spark her interest in telling stories herself.
That was the turn.
Back in North Carolina, she kept writing and slowly found her way to fiction for teens. She has said she began with stories for younger children, but her protagonists kept aging up until the young adult voice clicked. Before writing became her full-time job, she also worked for a publisher, an environmental nonprofit, and spent time as a nanny, raft guide, and park ranger.
Her debut novel, The Madman's Daughter, arrived in 2013 and gave readers a very Megan Shepherd kind of story: Gothic atmosphere, uneasy science, a sharp young heroine, and danger that feels both personal and monstrous. She followed it with Her Dark Curiosity and A Cold Legacy, completing a trilogy that reworked classic horror ideas for YA readers. The first book won the North Carolina Young Adult Book Award and was later optioned for screen adaptation.
She did not stay in one corner of the shelf for long. The Cage trilogy turns to alien captivity and survival, while Grim Lovelies and Midnight Beauties move into witches, beasties, and magical Paris. For younger readers, The Secret Horses of Briar Hill and Dog Star show the same interest in fear, hope, and the bond between people and animals.
Then she crossed into adult horror without losing her taste for the uncanny.
In Malice House and Midnight Showing, she follows artist Haven Marbury through a haunted inheritance, a secret manuscript, and a family curse that refuses to stay on the page. She has also written in the world of The Nightmare Before Christmas, adapting the film into prose and then continuing Sally's story in Hour of the Pumpkin Queen, which reached the New York Times young adult hardcover bestseller list.
Across all of these books, certain questions keep returning. What makes someone human. What power costs. What happens when curiosity goes too far. Animals, outsiders, girls under pressure, and strange houses show up again and again, so her work ranges widely without ever feeling random.
She now lives and writes on a historic farm outside Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband and children, along with cats, chickens, horses, bees, and a scruffy dog. She has joked that the farm comes with a few ghosts too, which sounds about right for a writer whose stories so often begin when the ordinary world turns a little strange.
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