Sasha Peyton Smith Books in Order

Sasha Peyton Smith grew up in the mountains of Utah, surrounded by siblings, books, and one very old cat. That mix of family noise, reading, and wide-open mountain country still feels close to the worlds she writes, even when her stories head to 1911 New York or an alternate version of Victorian London.

She studied biology and public health at the University of Utah and George Washington University. Before publishing novels, she also worked as a scientist and camp counselor, plus one very short-lived shift as a waitress that she has joked made her especially bad at waiting tables.

Writing was there long before it became a career.

As a teenager, Smith wrote poems about unreturned crushes and read huge amounts of young adult fiction. In college, she was a STEM major by day and a fanfiction writer in her spare time. Sharing that work with readers gave her a new feeling: writing did not have to stay private. It could be the thing she built a life around.

After college, she was back at her parents' home and unsure what came next. Reading about another author drafting a novel after graduation gave her the push to open her laptop and begin the story that became The Witch Haven. It was a practical little turning point, but an important one.

Her debut, The Witch Haven, introduces Frances Hallowell, a grieving teen seamstress who discovers a hidden school for witches in 1911 New York. It combines a murder mystery, dangerous magic, friendship, and a young woman who is tired of being told to stay small. The Witch Hunt follows Frances and her friends to Paris, where the consequences of earlier magic make the stakes much more personal.

Smith later turned to faerie bargains and ruthless high society in The Rose Bargain. Set in an alternate 1848 England ruled by an immortal faerie queen, the novel follows Ivy Benton as she enters a competition for a prince's hand while trying to save her family. Its sequel, The Thorn Queen, carries that story into a sharper struggle over power, love, and survival.

Complicated girls sit at the center of her books. So do sisterhood, grief, messy family loyalties, romance, and the question of what a person may give up to get what they need. Her heroines want answers and agency, even when the systems around them were built to deny both.

Her first novel became a New York Times bestseller, and her work has reached readers in many languages. Still, the details she shares about herself are pleasingly down to earth: road trip playlists, soup recipes, reality television, and adult ballet classes.

Smith now lives in Utah with her husband in an old house in the mountains. She has mentioned that it may have ghosts, though she has not seen one yet.