Midnight Tales Books in Order

Midnight Tales is Susan Ee's dark fairy-tale world, a linked set of novels set in the Kingdom of Midnight. The books follow different young women, and each one tells its own story, so they can be read on their own. Read together, though, they build a fuller picture of a place shaped by cruelty, magic, and the stubborn hope that somebody might still fight their way to a better ending.

The setting matters a lot here. Midnight is not a bright, comforting fantasy kingdom. It is a place of shadow wars, enslaved fairies, dangerous forests, moonlit castles, and ritual hunts where humans can become prey. That gives the whole series its edge. The world feels old and storybook at first glance, but the rules are hard, and survival depends more on nerve and judgment than on destiny.

These are fairy tales with teeth.

In Cinder & the Prince of Midnight, Ee opens the series with an orphan girl living in a kingdom where someone like her can be sold into a deadly hunt. A royal prince is caught in the expectations of the Dark King, and the story plays with Cinderella-like shapes without turning soft or shiny. What matters is the trap around both characters, and whether either of them can push back hard enough to escape the roles the kingdom has written for them.

Ruby & the Huntsman of Midnight shifts the focus to a young woman who survived the Midnight Hunt and still carries what it did to her. Ruby is pulled into the dangerous machinery of Midnight Castle, where a blood-soaked stranger, monster hunters, and werewolves make trust feel almost impossible. This gives the middle book a more hunted, claustrophobic energy. People are trapped, watched, and forced to guess whether the thing beside them is protector, prisoner, or predator.

Then Briar & the Dreamers of Midnight opens the world wider. Briar is trapped in a body cursed to sleep for generations, and her escape leads into the Dreaming, a nightmare space where evil fairies hunt rebels and old alliances fall apart. That makes the series stranger and more surreal without losing its core. Even in a dream world, the question stays the same: how does a young woman hold on to herself when the world has already decided how her story should end?

Across all three books, Ee keeps the tone fast, dark, and adventurous. Romance is part of the appeal, but it never replaces the danger. These stories are built around girls who push back, make risky bargains, size up monsters, and refuse to stay helpless just because the world expects them to. If you like retellings that keep the bones of familiar tales but strip away the comfort, Midnight Tales is the series to reach for.