The 19 Best Witch Novels of All Time

Salem histories, Discworld comedy, cosy romance and literary retellings of myth all cast their spells here. A few are childhood favourites, others came out this decade.

1. 1
   The Witches of Cambridge

   Alice Hoffman novel about two 1950s Radcliffe students drawn into a secret society of witches, tied to the history of the witch trials of colonial Massachusetts.
2. 2
   Practical Magic

   Alice Hoffman's 1995 novel about the Owens sisters, raised by their witch aunts in a Massachusetts town, later filmed with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.
3. 3
   Magic Lessons

   Alice Hoffman's 2020 prequel to Practical Magic, following Maria Owens from 17th-century England to Salem, Massachusetts.
4. 4
   The Witches of Eastwick

   John Updike's 1984 novel about three divorced women in a Rhode Island town who discover their powers and fall under the spell of Darryl Van Horne.
5. 5
   A Discovery of Witches

   Deborah Harkness's 2011 novel in which historian and reluctant witch Diana Bishop finds a bewitched manuscript in Oxford's Bodleian Library; first of the All Souls trilogy.
6. 6
   The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

   Sangu Mandanna's 2022 novel about Mika Moon, a solitary witch hired to tutor three young witches at the remote Nowhere House.
7. 7
   The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

   Zoraida Córdova's 2021 magical-realist novel about the Montoya family and the secrets of their matriarch Orquídea, with roots in Ecuador.
8. 8
   Circe

   Madeline Miller's 2018 retelling of the life of Circe, the witch of Greek myth exiled to the island of Aiaia.
9. 9
   Wyrd Sisters

   Terry Pratchett's 1988 Discworld novel in which Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick meddle in a royal succession.
10. 10
    The Once and Future Witches

    Alix E. Harrow's 2020 novel about three sisters who bring witchcraft into the women's suffrage movement of 1893.
11. 11
    Wicked

    Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel retelling the life of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's Oz.
12. 12
    The Witches

    Roald Dahl's 1983 children's novel about a boy and his grandmother who uncover a plot by England's witches to turn children into mice.
13. 13
    The Witching Hour

    Anne Rice's 1990 novel that begins the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, following a New Orleans family of witches across generations.
14. 14
    Lolly Willowes

    Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1926 novel about a spinster aunt who leaves her London family for the Chiltern village of Great Mop and becomes a witch.
15. 15
    The Witch of Blackbird Pond

    Elizabeth George Speare's 1958 novel, winner of the 1959 Newbery Medal, about Kit Tyler, who is accused of witchcraft in Puritan Connecticut.
16. 16
    The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

    Katherine Howe's 2009 novel in which a Harvard graduate student traces a spell book back to a woman accused in the Salem witch trials.
17. 17
    Weyward

    Emilia Hart's 2023 debut novel following three women of the Weyward line in 1619, 1942 and 2019, linked by a cottage in Cumbria.
18. 18
    Akata Witch

    Nnedi Okorafor's 2011 novel about Sunny Nwazue, a Nigerian-American girl who discovers she is one of the Leopard People.
19. 19
    The Witch of Portobello

    Paulo Coelho's 2006 novel telling the story of Athena, a woman drawn to spiritual practices, through the accounts of people who knew her.

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