Marlene Perez

Marlene Perez is an American author born in Story City, Iowa, who now lives in Southern California. She is best known for the Dead Is young-adult mystery series, beginning with Dead Is the New Black (2008) and continuing through titles including Dead Is So Last Year, Dead Is a State of Mind, and Dead Is Not an Option, which follow a small town's ordinary teenage residents uncovering supernatural mysteries with a comic, gossipy tone. Her debut novel was Unexpected Development (2004). Under the pen name Lana Perez, she has written the Star Sisterz series and contributed the entry Figure in the Frost to the Knights of the Silver Dragon franchise. Perez's fiction centers small-town, character-driven mysteries aimed at preteen and teen readers, often blending humor with the supernatural.