# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published November 4, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-19-best-witch-novels-of-all-time*

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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. **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. **Magic Lessons**
   Alice Hoffman's 2020 prequel to Practical Magic, following Maria Owens from 17th-century England to Salem, Massachusetts.
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. **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. **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. **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. **Circe**
   Madeline Miller's 2018 retelling of the life of Circe, the witch of Greek myth exiled to the island of Aiaia.
9. **Wyrd Sisters**
   Terry Pratchett's 1988 Discworld novel in which Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick meddle in a royal succession.
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. **Wicked**
   Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel retelling the life of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's Oz.
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. **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. **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. **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. **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. **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. **Akata Witch**
   Nnedi Okorafor's 2011 novel about Sunny Nwazue, a Nigerian-American girl who discovers she is one of the Leopard People.
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.

Tags: fantasy, books, fiction, magic, witches