Brandy Colbert
Brandy Colbert has published 11 books across 3 series. The recommended reading order starts with Pointe (2015).
Brandy Colbert is an American author who writes young adult fiction and has worked as an editor for national magazines. Born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, in the Ozarks, she built a career in publishing before turning to novels. Her editorial work across multiple magazines gave her a sharp eye for storytelling that now shapes her own books.
Colbert made her mark with Little & Lion, which won the 2018 Stonewall Children's and Young Adult Literature Award and was named Best Teen Romance of 2017 by Kirkus Reviews. The recognition established her as a voice in contemporary YA, writing stories that connect with teen readers through characters navigating identity, family, and relationships. She now lives and writes in Los Angeles, where she continues to build her body of work in young adult literature.
Shelf & Shadows
Order of Anthologies
- Tagsshort-storiesDescriptionSummer Days and Summer Nights collects twelve romantic short stories set during the season when heat and long days make everything feel possible. A teenager walks along a lake at sunset, trying to untangle first love. Another finds passion in the last place expected. Across twelve tales, characters face the confusing maze of attraction — heartfelt encounters and outlandish ones, each shaped by summer's particular fever. The anthology, edited by Stephanie Perkins and first published in 2016, gathers work by Leigh Bardugo, Nina LaCour, Libba Bray, Francesca Lia Block, Stephanie Perkins, Tim Federle, Veronica Roth, Jon Skovron, Brandy Colbert, Cassandra Clare, Jennifer E. Smith, and Lev Grossman. Each of the twelve stories asks the same question in a different key: what happens when summer's lazy days and heat-drunk nights push a person toward someone new, and the feeling that blooms might not last past September?Publication date17 May 2016Amazon rating4/5Print length400LanguageEnglishPublisherSt. Martin's Griffin
- Tagsshort-storiesDescriptionThree Sides of a Heart is a young adult anthology that reimagines the love triangle through sixteen stories set in worlds where three people want incompatible things. A teen girl offers kissing lessons. Zombies roam the Civil War South. The girl next door stands between the boy who loves her and the girl who loves them both. Vampires attend boarding school. Three teens fight monsters in an abandoned video rental store. The last three people on the planet face each other with nowhere else to turn. Each story takes the trope and bends it into a question about choice and self-determination. Edited by Natalie C. Parker and written by sixteen authors including Renee Ahdieh, Rae Carson, Brandy Colbert, Katie Cotugno, Lamar Giles, Tessa Gratton, Bethany Hagan, Justina Ireland, Alaya Dawn Johnson, EK Johnston, Julie Murphy, Garth Nix, Natalie C. Parker, Veronica Roth, Sabaa Tahir, and Brenna Yovanoff, the collection published in 2017 turns familiar romantic geometry into something strange and new. The question running through all sixteen is what happens when wanting two people means choosing who you are.Publication dateDecember 19, 2017Amazon rating4/5Print length448LanguageEnglishPublisherHarperCollins
- Tagsshort-storiesDescriptionTwo sisters meet at summer camp in Portland and discover there is no such thing as half when it comes to family. A boy labeled an Oreo for not being Black enough questions what authenticity really means. Two girls kiss in a Maryland town, and one of them realizes everything she thought she knew about herself might be wrong. Black Enough gathers seventeen short stories that ask what it means to be young and Black in America — and refuses to settle for a single answer. The anthology moves from urban neighborhoods to rural Missouri, from wealthy suburbs to immigrant households, tracing the infinite ways Black identity takes shape. Three friends walk home from the pool talking about nothing and everything. A high-class beauty dates the boy her mother would never approve of. Two boys from feuding families fall for each other. Each story challenges the idea that there is one right way to be Black, one set of experiences that counts, one voice that speaks for everyone. The question threading through every page is whether the boxes others build — too Black, not Black enough, the wrong kind of Black — can ever hold the truth of who someone actually is.Publication date8 January 2019Amazon rating4.7/5Print length416LanguageEnglishPublisherVersify
Order of Non-Fiction Books
- Tagsnon-fictionDescriptionBlack Birds in the Sky is a work of nonfiction that reconstructs the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, when a white mob crossed the train tracks into Greenwood, a thriving Black neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street, and burned thirty-five square blocks to the ground in a few hours, leaving hundreds dead. The book traces how that morning came to pass: white resentment of Black prosperity, the resurgence of white supremacist groups, the role of the media, and the economic and political forces that brought long-simmering tension to a boil. The massacre was singular in its devastation but not in its kind. The book places Tulsa within a longer history of white violence, from the country's earliest days through Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era to the present fight for justice and accountability. It asks why the massacre remained unknown to so many for so long, and what it means that the event has failed to fit into the story Americans tell themselves about their country. Winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and a YALSA Honor Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, the book explores how the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre is the story of America itself — and whether understanding who we are can point to a way forward.Publication dateOctober 5, 2021Amazon rating4.5/5Print length224LanguageEnglishPublisherClarion Books
Order of Standalone Novels
- TagscrimemysterysuspensethrillerDescriptionTheo is seventeen and finally stable. She eats, she dates, and she is on track to become a professional ballet dancer. Then Donovan comes home. Her oldest friend disappeared four years ago at thirteen, held by a kidnapper whose identity the police have now made public. Theo recognizes the name immediately: the man who took Donovan was once her boyfriend, someone who lied to her about his age and everything else. Donovan refuses to talk about what happened, and Theo knows she did nothing wrong. But telling the truth means admitting she had a relationship with a man who turned out to be a predator — an admission that could destroy her reputation and end her shot at the ballet career she has worked her entire life to reach. Pointe is a psychological novel about the weight of a secret and the cost of protecting it, and whether staying silent to save yourself is worse than the truth that could ruin you.Publication dateAugust 4, 2015Amazon rating4.3/5Print length352LanguageEnglishPublisherPenguin Young Readers Group
- Tagsyoung-adultDescriptionSuzette returns to Los Angeles from boarding school in New England uncertain she will ever leave again. Her friends are here, her family is here, and so is Emil, the boy she has been thinking about. Her stepbrother Lionel, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her, and she wants to be the support he can count on. Then she falls for someone new — the same girl Lionel loves. Little & Lion is a contemporary novel that turns a homecoming into a test of loyalty Suzette cannot pass cleanly. As Lionel's condition worsens and his behavior becomes more erratic, she is caught between the mistakes she made before she left and the ones she is making now. The question she cannot escape is whether she can find a way to help her brother before he harms himself, or whether her own choices have already made that impossible.Publication dateAugust 8, 2017Amazon rating4.4/5Print length336LanguageEnglishPublisherLittle, Brown Books for Young Readers
- Tagsyoung-adultDescriptionYvonne has been playing violin since she was seven, and the instrument has been her companion through every lonely day since her mother left. Finding Yvonne is a young adult novel about a high school senior who must confront the gap between the future she imagined and the one within reach. Graduation is weeks away, and the truth is settling in: she may not be good enough for conservatory. Her father is successful but distant, and the silence between them only deepens her doubt. Then she meets a street musician, another violinist who knows what it feels like to struggle for something that might never be enough. He is different from Warren, the steady boy she has loved, and he sees her in a way that feels new. But when Yvonne discovers she is pregnant, the decision she faces is no longer about which path to choose. It is about whether any of the futures she pictured are still possible, and what she is willing to give up to find out.Publication dateAugust 7, 2018Amazon rating4.2/5Print length288LanguageEnglishPublisherLittle, Brown Books for Young Readers
- DescriptionDove Birdie Randolph has spent years being the daughter her parents expect: textbooks instead of soccer, perfect grades, a future mapped out and followed without question. The Revolution of Birdie Randolph follows her through a Chicago summer when that careful obedience begins to crack. First comes Booker, a boy with a history her parents would never approve of. Then her estranged aunt Carlene arrives, moving into the apartment above the family hair salon after decades cycling through treatment facilities for addiction. Carlene is everything Birdie's parents are not — open-minded, easy, willing to let Birdie breathe. The closer Birdie grows to her aunt and to Booker, the more she wants a life beyond the one she has been handed. But the tension at home is building, and Carlene's return has stirred something her parents have kept buried for years. When those secrets finally surface, every truth Birdie has built her life on shifts beneath her feet.Publication dateAugust 20, 2019Amazon rating4.6/5Print length336LanguageEnglishPublisherLittle, Brown Books for Young Readers
- Tags---DescriptionThe Only Black Girls in Town, a Bank Street Best Book of 2021, is a middle-grade novel about two twelve-year-old girls who unearth buried secrets in a California beach town. Alberta has been the only Black girl in her small town for years, close to her best friend Laramie but lonely in ways Laramie can't quite reach. When a Black family buys the bed and breakfast across the street and arrives with a daughter her age, Alberta expects instant friendship. Edie, though, is homesick for Brooklyn and struggling to adjust to a place nothing like home. The girls' uneasy alliance shifts when they find a box of old journals hidden in Edie's attic. Together they begin piecing together who wrote them and why the journals were left behind. What they uncover reaches deeper than either girl anticipated — secrets that rewrite what they thought they knew about their town and the people in it. The past they're excavating is painful, and the closer they get to the truth, the less certain anything becomes.Publication dateMarch 10, 2020Amazon rating4.6/5Print length368LanguageEnglishPublisherLittle, Brown Books for Young Readers
- Tagsyoung-adultDescriptionThe Voting Booth is a young adult novel that unfolds over a single day when two first-time voters collide at their polling place. Marva Sheridan has spent months registering voters and doorbelling, and she arrives ready to cast her ballot and make a difference. Duke Crenshaw just wants to vote and move on — his band has its first paying gig tonight. Then Duke is turned away. His vote won't count. Marva refuses to let that stand. She takes it upon herself to fix the problem, and the two cut school to race from precinct to precinct, waiting in endless lines and hitting roadblock after roadblock in a system that seems designed to keep Duke from exercising his right. Along the way they pick up an unexpected errand: finding Marva's missing cat. What starts as a shared mission for democracy becomes something neither of them planned on. Duke and Marva are strangers with opposite attitudes about this election, but the longer the day stretches and the harder they fight to make his vote count, the clearer it becomes that the connection forming between them might matter as much as the ballot they're chasing.Publication dateJuly 7, 2020Amazon rating4.5/5Print length304LanguageEnglishPublisherDisney Hyperion
- Tags---DescriptionThe Blackwoods is a novel about two cousins caught between family legacy and their own lives when the matriarch who held everything together dies. Hollis Blackwood has never wanted fame, but her great-grandmother Blossom — a silver screen icon since 1962 and the head of the most famous Black family in Hollywood — made it impossible to escape. Her cousin Ardith, a child television star, has lived in the spotlight her whole life, working to be everything her family, her church, and the public expect. To both of them, Blossom was just Bebe. When she passes away, it changes everything. Private photos of Hollis leak in the wake of the death, dragging her into the attention she has spent years avoiding and forcing her to reckon with who she can trust. Ardith, who was perhaps closer to Blossom than anyone after her own mother died of a drug overdose, begins to crack under the weight of performing for everyone around her. Then a family secret surfaces — one that reaches back to the choices Blossom made in the golden age of Hollywood, choices that shaped the dynasty her great-granddaughters inherited. The question both cousins face is whether the legacy they have always believed in can survive the truth underneath it.Publication dateOctober 3, 2023Amazon rating4/5Print length383LanguageEnglishPublisherBalzer + Bray
Frequently Asked Questions about Brandy Colbert
Brandy Colbert's books can be read in several ways, but a chronological approach offers a sense of her development as a writer. You could start with her standalone novels, beginning with Pointe in 2015, followed by Little & Lion (2017), Finding Yvonne (2018), The Revolution of Birdie Randolph (2019), and The Only Black Girls in Town (2020). Her anthology contributions like Summer Days and Summer Nights (2016) and Three Sides of a Heart (2017) can be read at any point, as can her collection Black Enough (2019). Her non-fiction work, Black Birds in the Sky, was published in 2021.
A good starting point for Brandy Colbert's work is her debut novel, Pointe, published in 2015. This young adult novel introduces her distinctive voice and thematic concerns. Alternatively, readers might begin with Little & Lion (2017), another standalone novel that explores themes of family, identity, and belonging. These early works showcase her ability to craft compelling narratives and relatable characters, offering a solid introduction to her writing.
Brandy Colbert's books do not need to be read in a specific order. While she has contributed to anthologies and has a non-fiction work, her primary output consists of standalone novels. Each novel presents a distinct story with its own set of characters and plot. Readers can choose any of her novels to begin with, as they do not rely on knowledge of previous books for understanding. This allows for flexibility in exploring her bibliography.
Brandy Colbert primarily writes standalone novels. While she has contributed to anthologies such as Summer Days and Summer Nights and Three Sides of a Heart, and has published a non-fiction book, her fiction output consists of individual stories. Each of her novels offers a complete narrative arc and can be read independently of her other works. This approach means readers can jump into any of her novels without needing to follow a series.
Brandy Colbert has written a significant number of books. Her bibliography includes multiple standalone novels, contributions to several anthologies, and a non-fiction work. Counting her standalone novels, anthologies, and non-fiction, the total number of books she has authored or co-authored exceeds ten. For example, her standalone novels alone number at least eight, with more listed in her published works.
The first book Brandy Colbert wrote was Pointe, a young adult novel published in 2015. This marked her debut in the literary world. Pointe is a standalone story that follows a young ballet dancer navigating the complexities of her life. The book established her presence as a writer of engaging young adult fiction, setting the stage for her subsequent works.
Brandy Colbert's most recent book is Black Birds in the Sky, published in 2021. This is a work of non-fiction that explores the history of racial injustice in America through the lens of her own family's experiences. Prior to this non-fiction work, her most recent novel was The Only Black Girls in Town, published in 2020. Black Birds in the Sky offers a different facet of her writing, delving into historical and social commentary.
Brandy Colbert writes young adult fiction, with a focus on contemporary stories that often explore themes of identity, family, race, and relationships. Her novels are known for their nuanced characters and realistic portrayals of adolescent experiences. She has also contributed to anthologies featuring short fiction and has written a non-fiction book, Black Birds in the Sky, which examines racial injustice.
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Mason Deaver
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We verified the reading order for Brandy Colbert's books by cross-referencing official publication dates, ISBN databases, and publisher catalogs.
Last verified: July 2026
Shelf & Shadows. (…). “Brandy Colbert Books in Order.” Retrieved …, from https://www.shelfandshadows.com/authors/brandy-colbert