Kim Harrison
The Hollows — urban fantasy at its bookcase-bending best, with a witch protagonist and a Cincinnati you'd half-believe in.
Kim Harrison's The Hollows series — beginning with Dead Witch Walking — runs over a dozen novels following witch Rachel Morgan navigating a Cincinnati where the supernatural community is openly part of society after a virus killed most of the human population. Her Drafter series and Peri Reed Chronicles extend the catalogue. The prose is first-person and propulsive, the worldbuilding (witches, demons, vampires, pixies, weres) is dense and well-figured, and Rachel's voice is one of urban fantasy's most distinctive.
For adult readers. Content includes violence, sexual content (present but generally not central), and dark thematic material handled within the urban-fantasy register. The reading experience is the warm pull of urban fantasy at its best — Harrison's Cincinnati becomes a place readers want to return to. Pick this shelf when you want urban fantasy with a strong female narrator, a worldbuilding setup that earns its premises, and series structure that rewards committed reading.
- Cincinnati as supernatural setting
- Witch protagonist with strong voice
- Worldbuilding setup that earns itself
- Long-series satisfaction
