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  • Half City

Half City

Harker Academy #1 / 2
by Kate Golden
Half City (Harker Academy #1) by Kate Golden
★ 8.00 / 1
123456718910

Welcome to Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. Keep your daggers sharp, and your wits even sharper.

Viv Abbot is an average twenty-one-year-old girl. She lives in an expensive city where the rent is too high, works long hours at a thankless job, and is dating a guy she doesn’t even like in the hopes of winning her prickly mother’s approval.

She also happens to be a demon hunter.

Ever since her father's murder, she's been forced to hunt deviants alone, meaning everyone, including her family, sees her as an outsider . . . until the day she crosses paths with a dangerously alluring demon, Reid Graveheart. The reformed deviant tells her of a school for people just like her: Harker Academy for Deviant Defense. If she enrolls, she'll learn to hone her craft, work with other hunters, and never be alone again.

But Viv has a deadly secret. One that not even her new friends at Harker can know about, not if the school might hold the answers to untangling the mystery surrounding Viv's father’s death. When strange occurrences begin to plague the students, Viv will have to figure out who she can trust, all while trying to ace her classes, avoid falling for a demon, and make it through her first year at Harker in one piece. How hard could that be?

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FantasyParanormal RomanceUrban FantasyRomantasy
Release date: February 17, 2026

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Kate Golden

Kate Golden has quickly become one of the most recognizable new voices in fantasy romance, her books drawing readers into worlds where danger and desire are never far apart. She is best known for The Sacred Stones trilogy, beginning with A Dawn of Onyx, a USA Today bestseller that introduced her blend of gothic intrigue, slow-burn romance, and richly layered magic. With each installment, she deepened the tension between loyalty and betrayal, power and vulnerability, cementing her place in the fast-growing romantasy community.

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Golden’s path to publishing began in an unexpected moment. While on vacation, frustrated by books that were not sparking her imagination, she decided to write the kind of story she longed to read. That decision led to a manuscript that not only launched her career but also resonated with thousands of readers who recognized themselves in her heroines, characters who wrestle with fear and doubt before stepping into courage.

Her upcoming work expands her storytelling into new territory. Half City, the first in the Harker Academy series, takes readers into a dark academia setting where demon hunters, secret legacies, and forbidden attraction collide. With its blend of supernatural danger, school rivalries, and slow-building romance, the series promises the same emotional intensity that has made her earlier novels so beloved.

Based in Los Angeles, Golden works in the film industry alongside her writing, a dual career that influences the cinematic scope and pacing of her novels. Away from the page, she is an avid puzzle solver, game-night host with her husband and their puppy Milo, and a seeker of small joys like flea market treasures and cozy brunches. Those everyday passions ground her, even as her imagination continues to chart epic worlds where love and peril walk hand in hand.

Harker Academy

In a city that hides monsters in plain sight, survival is not about strength alone, it is about secrets. The Harker Academy series opens with Half City, where Viv Abbot, a young woman burdened by grief and financial struggles, lives a double life. By day she is ordinary, by night she is a demon hunter, carrying the legacy of a father whose death left more questions than answers.

Read more ...

Everything shifts when she crosses paths with Reid Graveheart, a reformed demon who lures her into a world she never imagined existed, a hidden academy built to train and protect those who walk the line between human and other. Within its walls, loyalty is tested, forbidden bonds spark, and shadows seem to whisper truths no one dares speak aloud.

What sets this series apart is its blend of dark academia atmosphere and urban fantasy grit. The halls of Harker are alive with danger, romance, and the promise of knowledge that comes at a price. Viv’s journey is not only about hunting demons but about confronting her own hidden nature, questioning who she can trust, and discovering whether belonging is worth the risks that come with it.

Mysterious, character-driven, and laced with slow-burning tension, Harker Academy is a story for readers who crave magic laced with danger, a heroine who is as flawed as she is fierce, and a world where every choice leaves a mark.


Harker Academy consists of one book and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.

Half City (Harker Academy #1)
★ 8.00 / 1
Cursed City (Harker Academy #2)
⧗ 8.00 / 1


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