Book of Night

About the Book of Night series

In a world where shadows can be bent, stolen, or weaponized by those who know how, Charlie Hall has spent years working the low end of the shadow-magic underworld -- grifting, running cons, always one step from the dangerous people she used to work for. When a body turns up connected to her past, Charlie is pulled back into a world of gloamists, black-market shadow magic, and secrets from her own history that she'd very much rather stay buried.

Holly Black's first fully adult series (the Charlatan Duology) trades Elfhame's faerie courts for a grounded, noir-inflected urban fantasy: shadow magic as both a literal power system and a metaphor for the parts of yourself you keep hidden, con-artist plotting, and a heroine who lies as easily as she breathes. It's a darker, grittier register than her YA work, closer in spirit to a heist thriller with magic bolted on than a fairy tale.

Two books tell one continuous story about Charlie's entanglement with the gloamists and the shadow-magic underworld she can't fully escape.

How to read this series

Read Book of Night then Thief of Night in publication order; it's a continuous story that should be read in sequence. This is an adult series (mature content, noir-thriller tone) and is unconnected to Holly Black's YA faerie books -- no prior reading is required.