The Menagerie

About The Menagerie

Twelve-year-old Zoe Kahn's small Wyoming town turns out to be hiding a secret zoo for mythological creatures -- griffins, unicorns, a bewildered young dragon -- run by the mysterious Care family, who need Zoe's help keeping the animals safe from a black market that wants to sell them. Cowritten by sisters Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland, the trilogy blends contemporary small-town mystery with light monster-of-the-week fantasy, aimed at a slightly younger reader than Wings of Fire.

Each book pairs a new magical-creature crisis with an ongoing thread about the Menagerie's true origins and the smugglers targeting it, building to a resolution across three fast, illustrated-chapter-book-adjacent middle-grade novels. It's a gentler, more grounded fantasy than the Sutherlands' dragon-war epics -- closer to a magical-creature rescue adventure than a chosen-one saga -- and a good fit for readers who want mythological creatures without high body counts or prophecy-driven stakes.

How to read this series

Read the three books in publication order: The Menagerie, Dragon on Trial, Krakens and Lies. It's a complete, serialized trilogy with an ongoing mystery about the Menagerie's smuggling threat that resolves by the third book, so start from book one.