Halloween is coming up next week and that means it’s time to get witchy! If you love a good witch story, you’re in luck because they’re a hot subject matter in fiction at the moment. Here’s a mixed selection that can satisfy every witchy need, from romantic to spooky to downright terrifying.
The witching tide / Meyer, Margaret
“East Anglia, 1645. Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer, and servant, has lived peacefully for more than four decades in her beloved coastal village of Cleftwater. Rendered voiceless as a child, Martha has not spoken a word in years. One autumn morning, a sinister newcomer appears. The witchfinder, Silas Makepeace, has been blazing a trail of destruction along the coast, and now has Cleftwater in his sights. Set over the course of just a few weeks that forever change the people of this village, The Witching Tide offers powerful and psychologically astute insights about the exigencies of friendship and the nature of loyalty, and heralds the arrival of a striking new voice in fiction.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
The book of witches
“With a breathtaking array of original stories from around the world, P. Djèlí Clark, Amal El Mohtar, Garth Nix, Darcie Little Badger, Sheree Renée Thomas, and two dozen other fantasy and science fiction geniuses bring a new and exciting twist to one of the most beloved figures in fiction, witches, in never-before-seen works written exclusively for The Book of Witches, compiled by award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan and illustrated by award-nominated artist Alyssa Winans.” (Catalogue)
After the forest / Woods, Kell
“Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour. Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Greta has a secret, though: the witch’s grimoire, secreted away and whispering in Greta’s ear for the past two decades, and the recipe inside that makes the best gingerbread you’ve ever tasted. But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her mysteriously addictive gingerbread, not to mention the rumors about her childhood misadventures, is a source of gossip and suspicion. And now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta’s magic-magic she is still trying to understand-may be the only thing that can save her. If it doesn’t kill her first..” (Adapted from Catalogue)