Shelby Mahurin Books in Order

Shelby Mahurin grew up on a small farm in rural Indiana, where a stick could become a wand and a cow could become a dragon. That kind of everyday make-believe stuck with her. She later turned it into young adult fantasy full of magic, danger, sharp banter, and difficult love stories.

Indiana remains an important part of her story. Mahurin still lives near the farm where she grew up with her husband and children, and her author bio has also included a cat and two dogs. When she isn't writing, she has said she enjoys reading and watching The Office.

Her first novel, Serpent & Dove, arrived in 2019. It introduces Louise "Lou" le Blanc, a witch hiding in a kingdom where witches are hunted, and Reid Diggory, a church-trained witch hunter. A forced marriage puts them on the same side, at least publicly, while their beliefs and loyalties keep pulling them apart.

The book launched the Serpent & Dove trilogy, continued in Blood & Honey and concluded in Gods & Monsters. The series builds a French-inspired fantasy setting around religious authority, witchcraft, old grudges, and the awkward fact that falling for your enemy can make every choice harder. Readers often come for the enemies-to-lovers setup, then stay for Lou and Reid's combative partnership and the growing group around them.

Lou does not do quiet obedience.

Mahurin has said that French folklore helped spark the world of Belterra, along with stories about witches, forbidden romance, and couples forced into close quarters. She researched folklore connected to the Dames Blanches as well as religious hierarchies and pagan celebrations while developing the first series. The result is not historical fantasy, but it borrows texture from those influences without leaving its own invented world behind.

Her later books return to Belterra through a new lead. The Scarlet Veil follows Célie Tremblay, a young huntswoman determined to prove herself in the Chasseurs, while The Shadow Bride continues her story amid vampires, revenants, and a threat to the boundary between life and death. These books shift toward a darker vampire romance while keeping the high-pressure supernatural world of the earlier trilogy.

The stakes get bigger, but the characters remain at the center.

Across Mahurin's work, people are asked to reconsider the stories they have been taught about monsters, duty, family, and themselves. Her protagonists are often stubborn, funny under pressure, and far from certain that they can trust the people beside them. That mix of peril, romance, and skeptical humor gives her books their forward pull.