Susan Vaught Books in Order
Browse Susan Vaught books in order, from YA standalones to middle grade mysteries, with quick summaries, series background, and easy where-to-start tips.
Last updated: July 6, 2026
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Publication Order
19 books
Fat Tuesday
by Susan Vaught
2004
Rusty Quinn's life is coming apart, her mother is spiraling, friends are in crisis, and home feels impossible. A run toward Mardi Gras becomes a sharp, funny, painful road story about choice, friendship, and growing up.
L.O.S.T.
by Susan Vaught
2004
High schooler Bren is yanked out of ordinary life by Jazz, the Queen of the Witches, who believes he may be the prophesied Shadowalker. In a hidden magical township, attraction and danger build fast as they face the Shadowmaster.
Shadowqueen
by Susan Vaught
2005
After a brutal battle leaves Jazz trapped in the land of the dead, Bren risks everything to bring her back. His search could save the witch world, or leave it exposed to the same darkness they thought they had beaten.
Stormwitch
by Susan Vaught
2005
In 1969, Ruba leaves Haiti for the Mississippi coast after her grandmother dies, carrying magic and history with her. As racism, the Klan, and Hurricane Camille close in, she has to fight for family and survival.
Blowout
by Susan Vaught
2006
Seventeen-year-old Jersey Hatch survives shooting himself, but survival leaves him with gaps in memory, damaged speech, and a body that no longer works the same way. His return home becomes a painful search for truth, shame, and hope.
Trigger
by Susan Vaught
2006
Jersey Hatch comes home from rehab after a self-inflicted gunshot wound with brain injury, missing memories, and a life he barely recognizes. To move forward, he has to learn why he pulled the trigger in the first place.
Witch Circle
by Susan Vaught
2006
Bren and Jazz are finally together, but ruling and protecting L.O.S.T. is messier than winning it. Feuding factions, a kidnapping, and the return of older threats test both their power and their trust.
Big Fat Manifesto
by Susan Vaught
2007
Jamie needs a scholarship, so she starts a bold school newspaper column about being fat and tired of being judged. What begins as self-defense turns into activism, public backlash, and a complicated look at love and identity.
Exposed
by Susan Vaught
2008
After a cruel rumor wrecks her reputation, Chan Shealy starts looking for comfort online. The attention feels safer than real life until an internet predator gets close enough to threaten not just Chan, but her little sister too.
A Prince Among Killers
by Susan Vaught
2009
War closes in on Eyrie as Aron, Stormbreaker, Dari, and the hidden prince Nic are pulled into a deeper fight. Magic, loyalty, and political betrayal collide as they try to stop leaders willing to destroy the land.
Assassin's Apprentice
by Susan Vaught
2009
In the two-moon world of Eyrie, farm boy Aron is taken at Harvest and forced into training with the assassin guild. As he discovers dangerous powers of his own, grief and revenge threaten to shape what he becomes.
Going Underground
by Susan Vaught
2011
Del is a good kid living as an outcast after one mistake turned him into a registered sex offender. Digging graves after school, he starts to believe in a future again when he meets Livia, but his past keeps digging back.
Freaks Like Us
by Susan Vaught
2012
When Sunshine disappears, Jason Milwaukee knows something is wrong, even if the adults doubt him and his own mind fights back. To find her, he has to push through schizophrenia, fear, and the suspicion that he may be involved.
Insanity
by Susan Vaught
2014
Forest takes a night job at Lincoln Hospital to save for college and finds a state mental institution full of tunnels, unstable patients, and restless dead. The deeper she goes, the less certain time, memory, and reality feel.
Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy
by Susan Vaught
2015
Eleven-year-old Footer Davis starts investigating a deadly fire and two missing children while her mother is in the hospital with bipolar disorder. As strange episodes creep in, Footer fears the mystery may be tangled up with her own family.
Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry
by Susan Vaught
2016
Dani follows a clue from her grandmother into family secrets tied to Oxford, Mississippi, and the violent history of Ole Miss desegregation. The mystery starts with a key and an envelope, then opens into something much bigger.
Super Max and the Mystery of Thornwood's Revenge
by Susan Vaught
2017
Max knows electronics better than most adults, but even her tricked-out wheelchair may not be enough when a cruel hacker targets her grandfather. The trail leads straight toward Thornwood Manor, where local ghost stories start feeling uncomfortably real.
Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse
by Susan Vaught
2019
When Jesse's dad is arrested over missing library money, she teams up with her first real friend and her tiny dog Sam-Sam to investigate. Then a tornado hits, and Jesse has to prove she can be brave in ways that matter.
Together We Grow
by Susan Vaught
2020
A storm drives a fox family toward a crowded barn, where fear first says no and kindness slowly says yes. This picture book turns disaster, shelter, and rebuilding into a gentle story about belonging.
Where should I start?
For a sharp middle grade mystery: Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy → Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry → Super Max and the Mystery of Thornwood's Revenge
If you want intense YA realism: Trigger → Going Underground → Freaks Like Us
For Southern history mixed with magic: Stormwitch
For witchy fantasy and romance: L.O.S.T. → Shadowqueen → Witch Circle
If you want epic guild fantasy: Assassin's Apprentice → A Prince Among Killers
Author bio
Susan Vaught was born in Oxford, Mississippi, and grew up in Mississippi before spending part of her teen years in Tennessee. That Southern background runs deep in her fiction. Small towns, family loyalties, local history, and the way people talk to each other all feel lived in, not pasted on.
She started writing young, around third grade, and kept at it through school. Her first publication was a poem near the end of college, but books took longer. Years passed before her first novel, Fat Tuesday, came out in 2004.
In the meantime, she was building another career. Vaught earned a BA from the University of Mississippi and later an MS and PhD at Vanderbilt. She became a neuropsychologist, working in hospitals and psychiatric settings, and that close knowledge of how people think, hurt, recover, and adapt shaped the kinds of stories she wanted to tell.
That job changed her writing.
In interviews about Trigger, she explained that the voices of her teen patients stayed with her. She was not copying one life onto the page, but she was listening closely to the blunt, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking way teenagers talk when they are in pain. That habit of listening helps explain why even her most dramatic books feel grounded.
Again and again, Vaught writes about kids and teens who feel misread, boxed in, or written off. In Trigger, a boy survives a suicide attempt and has to piece together his life after brain injury. In Freaks Like Us, a teen with schizophrenia tries to solve a disappearance while convincing adults to listen. In Going Underground, she takes on shame, punishment, and the long aftershock of one mistake.
She can turn that same empathy toward very different stories. Stormwitch brings together Haiti, coastal Mississippi, civil-rights era tension, and a hurricane charged with magic. Big Fat Manifesto follows a sharp, angry, funny teen pushing back against anti-fat prejudice. Later, in middle grade books like Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy and Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse, she mixes mystery with humor and a lot of heart.
Readers often come to Susan Vaught for the plot, then stay for the voice.
As she got older, she has said her writing voice kept getting younger, which helped lead her from YA into middle grade. That move makes sense when you read her later books. They still ask hard questions, but they do it through curious, stubborn kids who notice everything and refuse to quit.
Her books do not pretend that life is tidy. They make room for disability, mental illness, grief, social pressure, and family mess, but they are not clinical or cold. Even in the hardest books, there is usually wit, stubborn hope, and at least one kid who keeps asking better questions than the adults around them.
That work has reached a lot of readers, and it has been recognized too. Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile in 2016, and Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse won the same award in 2020. Earlier, Trigger and Stormwitch were both named Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association.
These days she lives in rural western Kentucky, where she works as a neuropsychologist at a state psychiatric facility. Official bios also place her on a farm with her wife and son, plus a crowd of animals. It feels fitting. Her fiction has always had room for the complicated, noisy, vulnerable parts of life.
Edited by
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