Feeling Witchy? KJ Dell'Antonia Has a Spooky Roundup Just For You
By KJ Dell’Antonia
Why are we so fascinated by stories of witches and magic? Practicing witchcraft has long been a secret way for society’s less powerful to protect themselves and one another, and when those powers make their way into the forefront of a story, it usually means someone downtrodden is going to rise up and make some changes in the world around them. As a reader, I’m not the only one who loves that. But the modern witch-as-protagonist tends to be not only about seizing her power. Stories infused with magic find different ways to show us that we don’t need to be alone (The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches), that we’re strongest when we reveal our true selves (Practical Magic), and that even magic can’t fix everything—and it’s possible that we wouldn’t want it to (my own book, Playing the Witch Card).
In other words, there’s a delightfully witchy read out there for everyone—and I’m excited to share these new ones with you!
Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
One sister is tasked with protecting their father’s library of magic books—the other told that she can never return to it or tell her sister why. A deliciously dark, twisty, bookish story of blood relatives, found families, and the ways we save each other.
The Witches of Bone Hill by Ava Morgyn
Morgyn had me at sisters inheriting their great-aunt’s estate and her secrets, and when she threw in a sexy tattooed groundskeeper, a crypt full of dead relatives, and an enemy stalking from the shadows, I basically said take my money—and I’m not sorry.
Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison
She’s been forbidden to ever return to her religious community, so why have they invited her to join the wedding feast? The author of Cackle and Such Sharp Teeth is back with another story in which reality turns slowly sinister in ways that will make you reconsider every casual myth and ingrained assumption.
Witchful Thinking by Celestine Martin
I am here for all the mystic towns where magic is the norm, especially when that magic goes wrong, and two star-crossed lovers are thrown together until they can break it.
Witch of Wild Things by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
A protagonist with a gift for plants, a family of brujas, a history with fantasmas, and an ex-novio who needs her magic without believing or understanding it—or her? Yes, please.
In Charm’s Way by Lana Harper
Each and every one of Harper’s Witches of Thistle Grove books has grown more magical, more intricate, and darker than the last. I love how magic is entwined with everything in this world, makes almost nothing (except maybe pet ownership) easier, and how each book feeds on the disasters of the earlier books so that we see that nothing is ever just a “happily ever after.”
Extra Witchy by Ann Aguirre
Aguirre’s magic power is infusing the glorious tropes of romance with the equally glorious tropes of magic. This opposites attract set in a world where witchcraft and magic are just emerging into daylight promises to be just as much fun as her two earlier books in the series, which I adored. Guaranteed to make a plane ride or a rainy afternoon disappear.
Hex Education by Maureen Kilmer
No one throws witchcraft into banal suburban life better than Kilmer, and no one knows why it doesn’t belong there better than her protagonist, Sarah, who once, along with her coven, burned down her college dorm and destroyed at least one life in the process. Or maybe three. Now it’s reunion time—for the coven, their college class, and their magic.
The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub
I didn’t need to hear anything other than the title, and the fact that Taub is the former head writer and executive producer of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. It didn’t hurt that Kitty Bennet, in this iteration, is actually… a cat. Buy now—I did.
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KJ Dell’Antonia is a New York Times best-selling author whose novels The Chicken Sisters and In Her Boots explore the same themes she once explored as a journalist: the importance of finding joy in our families, the challenge of figuring out what makes us happy, and the need to value the life we’re living more than the one in our phones and laptops, every single time. Her third novel, Playing the Witch Card, throws magic into the mix, but witchcraft, like reality TV and literary fraud, rarely really solves anyone’s problems. She is also the former editor of the New York Times’ Motherlode blog, the co-host of the #AmWriting podcast, and a passionate bookstagrammer (@kjda). She lives in Lyme, New Hampshire, with her husband, children and assorted dogs, cats, chickens and horses.