Mari Mancusi

Mari Mancusi writes for children, teenagers, and general audiences, bringing experience as an Emmy-winning television news producer to fast-moving speculative stories. Her bibliography includes vampire fiction, gaming adventures, retellings, and several dragon-centered series. Smoked concludes the Scorched trilogy, following Scorched and Shattered, and was published by Sourcebooks Fire in 2015. The finale returns to twins Trinity and Connor, the dragon Emmy, and competing visions of a future transformed by dragons. Two newly laid eggs force the characters to reconsider whether their efforts have prevented catastrophe or helped create it. The series joins fantasy creatures to time travel and apocalyptic science-fiction elements, giving Smoked the task of resolving both personal loyalties and competing timelines. Mancusi later developed younger dragon adventures through Dragon Ops and New Dragon City. Across these projects, she adapts the scale and complexity of speculative world-building to different age groups while keeping friendship, family, and consequential choice at the center.