Melissa Albert

Melissa Albert is an American author of young adult fantasy fiction, raised in Illinois and trained in journalism at the University of Iowa and Columbia College Chicago. She was working as a managing editor at Barnes & Noble when she wrote her debut novel, The Hazel Wood (2018), a fairy-tale noir that spent 36 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews. She continued the story in The Night Country (2020) and the companion collection Tales from the Hinterland (2021), which reimagines the dark fairy tales referenced within the series. Albert's other novels include Our Crooked Hearts (2022), which weaves contemporary suburban life together with a hidden history of witchcraft, and The Bad Ones (2024). Her fiction consistently returns to the uncanny edges of ordinary settings, suburbs, small towns, family history, where older, darker stories are shown to be quietly still active.