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Award-Winning author Leanna Renee Hieber grew up in rural Ohio where her childhood memories are full of inventing elaborate ghost stories. Graduating with a BFA in Theatre from Miami University, a focus study in the Victorian Era and a scholarship to study in London helped set the course for her books. The dramatic, historic, spiritual and paranormal are the primary forces in her lyrical, eerie, atmospheric fiction. You can read samples of her fiction at Leanna Renee Hieber’s website. 
I interviewed Leanna Renee Hieber about her fantasy debut, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, a gothic Victorian tale filled with ghosts, magic, and romance. Read my review of The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker and learn more at Leanna Renee Hieber's website!
Kelly: Percy Parker is an unusual heroine, both in her appearance and in her shy, timid personality. How did she first come to ... Read More
The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber
Editor's note. Since Kelly first reviewed these books in 2009, they have been picked up by Tor and combined into one volume called Strangely Beautiful (shown here).
As The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker opens, six London youngsters are chosen for a special destiny. Plucked from their ordinary lives, they are brought together by a mysterious goddess. Their mission: to protect humanity from the forces of evil. The goddess promises the six that, in time, they will be joined by a seventh.
Nineteen years later, timid orphan Percy Parker arrives at the Athens Academy, where two of the six "chosen ones" have made their careers. Percy is brilliant with languages, abysmal at mathematics, haunted by strange dreams, and gifted with the ability to see ghosts. She settles uneasily into lif... Read More
The Perilous Prophecy by Leanna Renee Hieber
Editor's Note: This book was originally published as The Perilous Prophecy of Guard and Goddess.
In The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker, we met Beatrice Smith, a member of the Guard that preceded Alexi Rychman’s circle. The Perilous Prophecy is a prequel, focusing on Beatrice’s time in the Guard and on the goddess Persephone as she makes preparations for the war against Darkness. While this book is set earlier than the two existing books, I recommend starting with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, because the Grand Work is explained there in more detail.
Beatrice is the daughter of a British archaeologist living in Cairo. As the story begins, she and five other young people in Cairo receive the call: they are to be the next Guard. At fir... Read More
The Eterna Files by Leanna Renee Hieber
Just after President Lincoln’s assassination, his wife Mary sets a governmental task force to find a cure for death, thus setting in motion the plot of The Eterna Files (2015) by Leanna Renee Hieber. Seventeen years later, the science team working on the Eterna Compound is mysteriously murdered, as is a parallel team in England, where Queen Victoria wants Britain, not America, to be the first to discover an answer to mortality. Both countries seek to find out what happened to their teams, as well as learn what the other nation has or has not discovered. In America, sensitive Clara Templeton is the main protagonist, helped by a small group of fellow paranormals, including her mentor, a powerful senator who has raised her since when her parents were killed. On the other side of the pond,... Read More
We often post our chats with authors on Tuesdays, but we're trying something new today. Instead of asking one author several questions, we've asked several authors just one question. Please leave a comment and let us know how you like this format. We'll choose one commenter to win a copy of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver on audio CDs (or something else from our stacks).
Question: Which speculative fiction writer has had the greatest influence on your own writing style and what, specifically, do you find most inspirational about that writer’s style?
Daniel Abraham / M.L.N. Hanover: Read More
Today I'm turning it over to Leanna Renee Hieber who wants to talk about one of her favorite bookstores, Word in Brooklyn, New York. Our own Kelly Lasiter is a big fan of Ms. Hieber's (read Kelly's reviews of her work) and is looking forward to her new young adult series, Magic Most Foul. which begins with Darker Still, releasing on November 1. You can follow Leanna Renee Hieber and her work at Leanna Renee Hieber's website, Twitter and Facebook.
"Leanna Renee Hieber here, autho... Read More
Leanna Renee Hieber is an actress, playwright, artist and the award-winning, bestselling author of Gothic Victorian Fantasy novels. The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker hit Barnes & Noble and Borders Bestseller lists and garnered numerous regional genre awards (see Kelly's reviews). The revised omnibus edition with new content releases as Strangely Beautiful from Tor Books on April 26. Leanna's MAGIC MOST FOUL saga began with Darker Still, an American Bookseller's Association "Indie Next Lis... Read More
Dark Nest — (2008-2011) Winner of the 2009 Prism Award for excellence in published works of Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal Romance in the Novella Category. Publisher: Chief Counsel Ariadne Corinth has just found out her long-time lover, the powerfully gifted Chief Counsel Kristov Haydn, has died. Newly evolved psychically gifted humans have been sent by the Homeworld on a space mission aboard two distinct “Nests”. Relationships between the Light Nest and the Dark Nest have faltered and Ariadne is sure there’s something insidious behind it. In a matter of hours, Ariadne must find out what really happened to Kristov, unite her people to discover vast new powers the Homeworld denied them, or else submit to genocide.
Magic Most Foul — (2011-2013) Young adult. Publisher: The Picture of Dorian Gray meets Pride and Prejudice, with a dash of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York City, 1882. Seventeen-year-old Natalie Stewart’s latest obsession is a painting of the handsome British Lord Denbury. Something in his striking blue eyes calls to her. As his incredibly life-like gaze seems to follow her, Natalie gets the uneasy feeling that details of the painting keep changing… Jonathan Denbury’s soul is trapped in the gilded painting by dark magic while his possessed body commits unspeakable crimes in the city slums. He must lure Natalie into the painting, for only together can they reverse the curse and free his damaged soul.
Novellas and short stories:
