This year we’re spotlighting mostly witchy books during the Halloween period, and we’ve asked a couple of colleagues to come up with their choices of titles where witches are the main characters.
Emma’s Choices
Cackle by Rachel Harrison
Get yourself a cup of tea and put on your fluffy socks, because it is time for a real autumn read (featuring witches)!
Protagonist Annie is a sympathetic, hopeless thirty-year-old who has lost everything and decides to move to “a small village upstate”, where people are friendly and life is simple. But of course, life in this cute village turns out not to be that simple! Where there are witches, there is magic and danger.
Through Annie’s eyes, you will discover what is actually going on in this place, meanwhile Annie is learning more about herself and her feminine strength. The story’s scary bits add excitement and mystery to the coziness of porcelain garden frogs and Rose’s raspberry jelly.
Perfect for lovers of all things witchy and feminist!
Salt & Broom by Sharon Lynn Fischer
What an amazing story!
This is a witchy retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre – although the classic already lends itself for witchy interpretations with its gothic manor and dark, unexplainable happenings – this new version presents Jane more openly as a witch rather than a timid governess, hired to undo Thornfield Hall of the scary happenings that have plagued the master of the house and as his servants for the past year.
The author knows her witchy rituals and objects, which made this story interesting as well as entertaining. A recently deceased wife, abandoned ruins and spooky hidden gardens – this book is a lovely fall read that is both exciting, romantic, and sometimes – at least for me – downright scary.
A lovely story to curl up with on a cold autumn day (or hot summer evening, really, the atmosphere will pull you right in). The writing was strikingly calm and descriptive, making me feel as if I was standing on the grounds of Thornfield Hall myself, which would be both a lovely and scary experience I’m sure!
Definitely recommend.
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
A fan of cozy yet magical yet exciting stories? Then this book may be a great addition to your to-be-read list!
Protagonist Emily Wilde is a Cambridge scholar who studies fairies. As a reader you accompany Emily on the last expedition before completing her Encyclopedia of Faeries. That fairies are not just tiny, sweet creatures dressed in pink and lilac, you will discover as Emily willingly and unwillingly enrolls in adventures in the dark fairy realm of Norwegian Ljosland. While discovering the Liosland fairies, she also gets to discover more about her own character and that of her charming and mysterious colleague and friend Wendell Bambleby.
And even if there are no witches in this story, it is an enchanting, warm and definitely exciting read!
Wicca Sticker Book published by Union Square & Co.
A collection of stickers for the lovers of all things wiccan.
“A stunning collection of beautiful vintage stickers on all subjects magickal and mystical―from crystals to cats, moons to mages, goddesses and more.”
Damla’s Choices
Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers by Taisia Kitaiskaia
“Witches and women writers alike dwell in creativity, mystery and other worlds. They aren’t afraid to be alone in the woods of their imaginations or to live in huts of their own making. They’re not afraid of the dark.”
In this curious little grimoire, extraordinary female writers’ lives are merged with magic and fantasy in poetic, playful, and imaginative words. Within its beautifully illustrated pages, Virginia Woolf is designated the Guardian of the waters, the porcelain, and the lexicon. Agatha Christie is crowned the Grand Dame of trickery, murder, and teatime. Sappho becomes the Siren of the lyre, honey, and ruins. Shirley Jackson casts a spell as the Witch of villages, domestic horrors, and omens.
This is a magically unique biography, not to be missed.
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
“One witch you can laugh at. Three you can burn. But what do you do with a hundred?
Most people run, it turns out.”
A beautifully atmospheric, earthy and magical read perfect for the darker spooky season.
It is a story about sisterhood, that unbreakable bond deep inside the bones, the bitterness, the love, the anger, wound tightly together with spells, fairy tales, myths, lullabies, and rhymes. It is sharp edges and soft whispered words; it is a warm glow and the maliciously dark corners; it is the smell of freshly tilled earth mixed with the smell of singed metal.
From the characters, to the writing and the plot, this book charmed me straight from the first page and did not disappoint until the last.
The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling
“Never mix vodka and witchcraft.”
The best way to describe this book would be “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” meets “Hocus Pocus”, dipped in Halloween. Except it is a bit sexy. And the talking cat in the story is much more focused on the important things in life (i.e. TREATS). And there is a Welsh accent involved. I don’t know if you have ever heard the Welsh accent, but it is not what I ever considered sexy. Now, however, I am confused and might be reconsidering a little bit.
It has everything you would like to see in a Halloween-themed romance: autumn, candles, hexes, being petty with your ex, ghosts, and heartbreakingly good bad boys.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”
Is there anything scarier than an angry, misinformed mob? Maybe a group of men feigning moral and religious superiority over women’s lives for personal gain? Or maybe a woman scorned finding righteousness in her suffering?
In a town full of envy, resentment, maliciousness, secrets, shifting alliances, and hypocrisy, we witness the events that resulted in the famous Salem witch trials in an upsetting, sickening series of events.
This book is frustrating, in more ways than one, but it was definitely worth a read.
