Hemphill's 2010 novel, "Wicked Girls", is a free-verse historical novel of the Salem Witch Trials. "Wicked Girls" was a 2010 "L.A. Times" Book Prize Finalist. "The Horn Book Magazine" has singled out her novels in verse to highlight, calling the poetry in her 2012 work, "Sisters of Glass", "elegant." In 2013 she wrote, "Hideous Love", which is also written in free-verse is about the writer Mary Shelley. "Hideous Love" was considered by to be faithful to the history of Shelley's life, especially in imagining the difficulties of living under the principals of free love and "the compromises culture required of a woman of genius during the time period."