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Seanan McGuire

Biography

Seanan McGuire

Seanan McGuire is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex and Locus award-winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. In 2022 she managed the same feat again!

Seanan McGuire

Books by Seanan McGuire

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her. She never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth. Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake --- and found herself in a world of water. In Belyyreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people. But even in Belyyreka, there are dangers and trials, and Nadya soon would find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

All across the world, people look up at the moon and dream of gods. Gods of knowledge and wisdom, gods of tides and longevity. Over time, some of these moon gods incarnated into the human world alongside the other manifest natural concepts. Their job is to cross the sky above the Impossible City --- the heart of all creation --- to keep it connected to reality. And someone is killing them. There are so many of them that it's easy for a few disappearances to slip through the cracks. But they aren't limitless. In the name of the moon, the lunar divinities must uncover the roots of the plot and thwart the true goal of those behind these attacks --- control of the Impossible City itself.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

Mary Dunlavy didn't intend to become a professional babysitter. Of course, she didn't intend to die, either, or to become a crossroads ghost. As a babysitting ghost, she's been caring for the Price family for four generations. With her first charge finally back from her decades-long cross-dimensional field trip, with a long-lost husband and adopted daughter in tow, it's time for Mary to oversee the world's most chaotic family reunion. And that's before the Covenant of St. George launches a full-scale strike against the cryptids of Manhattan, followed quickly by an attack on the Campbell Family Carnival. It's going to take every advantage and every ally they have for the Prices to survive what's coming --- and for Mary to avoid finding out what happens to a babysitting ghost if she loses the people she's promised to protect.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children. When the school’s (literally irresistible) mean girl realizes that Antsy's talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, Antsy is forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise. Along the way, they will travel from a world hiding painful memories that cut as sharply as its beauty, to a land that time wasn’t yet old enough to forget --- and more than one student's life will change forever.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

Melanie has a destiny, though it isn’t the one everyone assumes it to be. She’s delicate; she’s fragile; she’s dying. Now, truly, is the winter of her soul. Harry doesn’t want to believe in destiny, because that means accepting the loss of the one person who gives his life meaning, who brings summer to his world. So, when a new road is laid out in front of them --- a road that will lead through untold dangers toward a possible lifetime together --- walking down it seems to be the only option. But others are following behind, with violence in their hearts. It looks like Destiny has a plan for them after all.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

If you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here. If you ever wondered about a favorite toy from childhood, it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back. And the headphones that you swore this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it… Antoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she discovers that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds. And stepping through those doors exacts a price. LOST IN THE MOMENT AND FOUND tells us that childhood and innocence, once lost, can never be found.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

There is another school for children who fall through doors and fall back out again. It isn't as friendly as Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children. And it isn't as safe. When Eleanor West decided to open her school, her sanctuary, her "Home for Wayward Children," she knew from the beginning that there would be children she couldn’t save. When Cora decides she needs a different direction, a different fate, a different prophecy, Miss West reluctantly agrees to transfer her to the other school, where things are run very differently by Whitethorn, the Headmaster. She will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated of late. When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to "Be Sure" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies and other magical equines --- a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes. But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story. Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math. Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realize it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet. Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own. Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

When Jack left Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children, she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister --- whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice --- back to their home on the Moors. But death in their adopted world isn't always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack is herself carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome. Eleanor West's "No Quests" rule is about to be broken. Again.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

This fourth entry in the Wayward Children series is a prequel that tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should. When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she's found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest --- not when she has an entire world to save! If she can't find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she never will have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter --- polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline. Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter --- adventurous, thrill-seeking and a bit of a tomboy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got. They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted. They were 12 when they walked down the impossible staircase, and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you for a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

by Seanan McGuire - Fantasy, Fiction

In Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, children have always disappeared under the right conditions and emerged somewhere else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she's back. The children under Miss West's care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy's arrival marks a change at the Home. There's a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it's up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things. No matter the cost.