Gabriella Poole

Gabriella Poole is the byline Gillian Philip used for the four Darke Academy novels, a fantasy sequence developed with Hothouse Fiction. Secret Lives opens the series with Cassie Bell, a scholarship student entering an elite school that moves to a different city each term. Her arrival in Paris brings social divisions, unexplained behavior, and the discovery of the Few, a powerful group hidden within the academy. Hachette Children’s Group brought out the novel in 2009, with later editions identifying it as book one. Philip has explained that Hothouse created the initial package and that she wrote the complete sequence under the Gabriella Poole name. Her wider career includes fantasy, historical fiction, and stories for younger readers, but these books focus especially on belonging, privilege, and supernatural power within a mobile school community. Secret Lives establishes both Cassie’s outsider perspective and the mysteries that continue through Blood Ties, Divided Souls, and Lost Spirits.