While a lot of books about magic schools have come out in the wake of the Harry Potter novels, some have used this trope as the jumping off point for something that isn’t a crass clone. Take Sarah Gailey’s Magic For Liars (hardcover, Kindle), a noir mystery that, Gailey notes in the following email interview, “is obviously in conversation with the Harry Potter books in a major way,” but is clearly not just a dark, smoke-filled version of J.K. Rowling’s books.
