City of Bones

City of Bones was first published in 2007 and is the opening novel of The Mortal Instruments, the series that made Cassandra Clare's name. It appeared in the middle of the urban fantasy boom, and its contribution was a young adult version of the form: a hidden society in New York, a set of teenagers with inherited responsibilities, and a romance running alongside the discovery of what the heroine is. Clare published a second trilogy in the same world and later a third, along with a prequel series and film and television adaptations.

The novel's plot is a search for a missing artefact and a missing mother, and its structure is a long introduction to the world: the Institute where the Shadowhunters live, the Downworlders who are not human, the Laws that govern the relationships among them, and the demons that keep breaking in. Clary is new to all of it, which makes her the reader's guide, and Jace, Alec and Isabelle are the Shadowhunters who take her in. Magnus Bane, the warlock who appears in the middle of the book, became one of the franchise's most popular characters.

The book was followed by five further Mortal Instruments novels and by The Infernal Devices and The Dark Artifices. It was adapted into a film in 2013 and a television series that ran from 2016. It is the first book in the series and cannot really be started anywhere else.