Cate Tiernan Books In Order

Publication Order of Wicca: Sweep Books

Publication Order of Balefire Books

Publication Order of Immortal Beloved Books

Publication Order of Birthright Books

Cate Tiernan is the pseudonym of Gabrielle Charbonnet, an American writer of young adult paranormal and fantasy novels. She is best known for the “Sweep” series of novels that follow the magical adventures of a set of high school students, and particularly that of the lead Morgan Rowlands. She currently has more than thirty titles spread over the” Immortal Beloved”, “Balefire” and “Sweep” series. Tiernan was born in 1961 New Orleans, one of the most exotic and rich cultures in the American South that had a profound influence on her life and later writing. While children in other American cities sold lemonade on their front yards, Tiernan and her fellow New Orleans kids made wax dolls of their enemies and sold voodoo dolls. Despite the constant humidity and humidity she found the city beautiful, particularly its acceptance of colorful and eccentric behavior and the air of indolence. She attended college in New York moved back home to New Orleans then back to New York, where she had got a job in publishing. It was while she was working in New York that she wrote her first novel, a children’s books that she published in 1990. She found life in Manhattan incredible even though she earned very little money. There were so many interesting people to interact with and watch and so much to see and do, though after a while the frenetic energy started wearing her down. Eight years after moving to New York where she had helped edit L.J. Smith’s blockbuster title “The Secret Circle”, she moved back to New Orleans with her husband.

Cate Tiernan lived in New Orleans for the best part of five years during which time she has two children. But even as she found New Orleans an important and primal place for her children to be born in given the generations of her family that lived there, she felt it was time for a change. A few years after the birth of their children, the family moved to Durham North Carolina, a suburban city very different from New Orleans. While she has had generations of family that lived and grew up in New Orleans she denies being a witch and even finds Wicca to be too organized for her liking. She is more of an idiosyncratic person that loves the pantheistic and new agey conventions of everyone doing their own thing. Nonetheless, she does relate to Wicca and has found inspiration for some of her novels from the religion. Talking of inspiration and influence, her biggest has been the empathetic, imaginative and sensual writing of Barbara Hambly. Other influences include the likes of Barbara Pym, P.D. James, Phillip Larkin, and Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

The lead in the Sweep series of novels is Morgan Riordan Rowlands, who is also the narrator of the series. She has a daughter with her fiancé Hunter Niall named Moira. Morgan Rowlands is the daughter of Maeve Riordan and Ciaran MacEwan and was given up when she only seven months old. She grew up in the household of Sean and Mary Grace Rowlands. A few years later, Morgan’s biological parents died through what her adoptive parents suspected was magical circumstances though they never told her. They changed her name to Molly to confuse any spirits that may have been after her though she reverted back to Morgan when she was in the fourth grade. In the series, Morgan is resident in New York’s Widow’s Vale and at the start of the series is a high school junior. She knows nothing about magic until Cal Blaire a new senior student proficient in Wicca comes to the school. Through a relationship with Cal Morgan, she learns about her family origins, powers, and her heritage even as she struggles with her feelings for Cal. What she does not know is that she has a whole range of foes, allies, family secrets, and hereditary powers that can only be unleashed if she together with her soul mate called Muirn beatha dan in Wicca. Among some of her powers include shape shifting and pyrokinesis, a rare gift that is only found in blood witches that she got from her mother.

“Book of Shadows” is the first novel of the “Sweep” series of novels by Cate Tiernan. Morgan Rowlands is a junior high schooler that lives in New York, supposedly living an ordinary life. But her tranquil life is turned upside down when Cal Blair a senior transfers to her school taking in all the girls with his olive skin, perfect body, colored eyes, and angelic face. Having already become popular for his good looks and charisma he organizes a homecoming party for several of his schoolmates. It is at the party that Cal asks his closest school mates to join him in a room where he tells them he is a Wiccan. He asks them to join him in a Wiccan Sabbath, a celebration of Mabon. Many of the guests leave in surprise and bewilderment but Morgan and Bree stay behind to participate. The decision turns out to be a life changer as Cal becomes interested in Morgan, who shows an uncanny ability for witchcraft. But as the two get closer together, Morgan and Bree’s friendship deteriorates as Bree wants Cal for herself. A few days after celebrating the Samhain, Cal forms the Cirrus coven during which Morgan comes to learn that she had inherited magical powers from her mother. She is a “blood witch”.

“The Coven” is the second novel of the “Sweep” series of novels that continues the story Morgan who just learned that she is a “blood witch”. She confronts her parents believing that she had got her powers from them and receives a stinging emotional slap when they tell her she was adopted. She goes out in a rage to go find her boyfriend Cal who comforts her. Their relationship grows stronger as Cal makes her believe that they are soul mates even if their relationship is on the brink of totally destroying her friendship with Bree. Morgan now wants to find who her parents were but her relationship with Cal has caused so much friction that Raven and Bree leave Cirrus to go to a coven led by Sky Eventide. In her quest for her origins, Morgan eventually meets Hunter Niall and Sky of the rival coven and feels strangely wary around them. While she is trying to avoid their company, she goes into another room in the house and stumbles upon the “Book Of Shadows” that had once belonged to her mother, in a secret library.