Join CUE and CCW for a special evening with NYT Bestselling Author Melissa de la Cruz '93CC on Tuesday, February 6 to celebrate her suspenseful thriller, GOING DARK. The moderated fireside chat in Hancock Park will cover Melissa’s writing journey, creative process, and running her own imprint with Disney Publishing.

In this ripped-from-the-headlines Gone Girl meets A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Melissa weaves a white-knuckle thriller about a beautiful young influencer who vanishes after going on vacation with her boyfriend. Told through a mixture of social media posts, diary entries, and firsthand accounts, GOING DARK is about all the missing girls who fall off the radar.

Event Time: 6 – 8PM PT, light refreshments to be served
Location: Private Residence in Hancock Park (address provided upon ticket purchase)
Ticket includes event admission + book (ticket purchase is NON-REFUNDABLE) Get your tickets here!

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Melissa de la Cruz is the #1 New York Times, #1 Publisher’s Weekly and #1 IndieBound bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and award-winning novels for readers of all ages. Many of her more than seventy books have also topped USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists and been published in over twenty countries.

De la Cruz’s novel, The Isle of the Lost, the prequel to the Disney Channel Original Movie Descendants, spent more than fifty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Descendants starring Kristen Chenoweth and Dove Cameron was the #1 cable TV movie of 2015. The series’ subsequent books, Return to the Isle of the Lost and Rise of the Isle of the Lost, were also New York Times bestsellers.

De la Cruz is also known for the Blue Bloods series (with three million copies in print), and the Witches of East End series, which was turned into a two-season drama series starring Julia Ormond, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Rachel Boston and Mädchen Amick on Lifetime Television. She is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Queen’s Assassin and the Alex & Eliza series, as well as the graphic novel Gotham High and her adult suspense novel The Birthday Girl. Her recent hits include the Never After series and Disney’s The Super Secret Octagon Valley Society for middle-grade readers along with Going Dark and The Headmaster’s List for young adults.

De la Cruz’s four Hallmark Christmas movies, Christmas in Angel Falls, Angel Falls: A Novel Holiday, Pride Prejudice and Mistletoe (based on her novel) and Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen, were the top-rated movies for their Christmas season on the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries.

Currently she has The Ring and The Crown in development with 20th Century Television and Blue Bloods with Paramount Plus. Disney’s Descendants returns with her novel Beyond the Isle of the Lost: Wonderland to coincide with the new movie Descendants: Rise of Red debuting in summer of 2024.

Melissa de la Cruz is the co-director of YALLFEST (Charleston, SC) and the co-founder of YALLWEST (Santa Monica, CA), the two largest and most vibrant young adult book festivals in the country, attracting more than 30,000 readers every year.

A former fashion and beauty editor, Melissa has written for The New York Times, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Allure, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, Teen Vogue, CosmoGirl! and Seventeen. She has also appeared as an expert on fashion, trends and fame for CNN, E! and FoxNews.

Melissa de la Cruz grew up in Manila and moved to San Francisco with her family, where she graduated high school salutatorian from The Convent of the Sacred Heart. At Columbia University, she majored in art history and English.