Spells and Superstitions: 13 Horror Books About Witches

White Is For Witching (Helen Oyeyemi)

In a vast, mysterious house on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling. Lily is gone and her twins, Miranda and Eliot, and her husband, Luc, mourn her absence.

All is not well with the house which malignly confuses visitors in its mazy rooms, forcing winter apples in the garden when the branches should be bare. Generations of women inhabit its walls. And Miranda, with her keen sense for spirits, is more attuned to them than she is to her brother and father. This book is electrifying in its expression of myth and memory, loss and magic, fear and love. 

Hour of The Witch (Chris Bohjalian)

Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four years old. She is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary’s hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life.

But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, Mary soon finds herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary’s garden and when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, Mary must fight to escape not only her marriage but also the gallows.

The Witching House (Brian Moreland)

In 1972, twenty-five people were brutally murdered in one of the bloodiest massacres in Texas history. The mystery of who committed the killings remains unsolved.

Over forty years later, Sarah Donovan and her partner Dean with another couple go on an exploring adventure. The old abandoned Blevins House is rumored to be haunted.

The two couples are about to discover the mysterious house has been waiting for all these years. And down in the cellar, they will encounter a monstrous creature that hungers for more than just human flesh.

Maggie’s Grave (David Sodergren)

The small Scottish town of Auchenmullan is dead and has been for years. It sits in the shadow of a mountain, forgotten and atrophying in the perpetual gloom. Forty-seven residents are all that remain. There’s nothing to do there, nothing to see, except for a solitary grave near the top of the mountain.

MAGGIE WALL BURIED HERE AS A WITCH reads the faded inscription.

But sometimes the dead don’t stay buried. Especially when they have unfinished business.

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery (Edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering)

These are tales of wickedness… stories of evil and cunning, written by today’s women you should fear. Includes tales from Kelley Armstong, Rachel Caine, and Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery will take the classic tropes of tales of witchcraft and infuse them with fresh, feminist perspective and present-day concerns–even if they’re set in the past. These witches might be monstrous, or they might be heroes, depending on their own definitions.

The Nature of Witches (Rachel Griffin)

For centuries, witches have maintained the climate, their power from the sun peaking in the season of their birth. But now their control is faltering. All hope lies with Clara, an Everwitch whose magic is tied to every season.

In Autumn, Clara wants nothing to do with her power. It’s wild and volatile, and the price of her magic is too high. In Winter, the world is on the precipice of disaster. Fires burn, storms rage, and Clara accepts that she’s the only one who can make a difference. Clara must choose between her power and her happiness, her duty and the people she loves…

The Year of the Witching (Alexis Henderson)

In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet’s word is law, Immanuelle Moore’s very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her family in disgrace.

But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother.

Immanuelle begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history. She realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness.

Hex (Thomas Olde Heuvelt)

Welcome to Black Spring, a town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a 17th-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters your homes at will. She stands next to your bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened.

The elders of Black Spring have quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent the curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting, but in so doing send the town spiraling into the dark, medieval practices of the past.

The Good House (Tananarive Due)

The home that belonged to Angela Toussaint’s late grandmother is so beloved that the townspeople in Sacajawea, Washington call it the Good House. But that all changes one summer when an unexpected tragedy takes place behind its closed doors, and the Toussaint’s family history—and future—is dramatically transformed.

Angela has not returned to the Good House since her son, Corey, died there two years ago. But now, Angela is finally ready to return to her hometown and go beyond the grave to unearth the truth about Corey’s death. Could it be related to a terrifying entity Angela’s grandmother battled seven decades ago?

The Boatman’s Daughter (Andy Davidson)

Ever since her father was killed when she was just a child, Miranda Crabtree has kept her head down and her eyes up, ferrying contraband for a mad preacher and his declining band of followers to make ends meet and to protect an old witch and a secret child from harm.

But dark forces are at work in the bayou, conspiring to disrupt the rhythms of Miranda’s peculiar and precarious life. When the preacher makes an unthinkable demand, it sets Miranda on a desperate, dangerous path, forcing her to consider what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her loved ones safe.

The Remaking (Clay McLeod Chapman)

Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter Jessica are shunned by the Pilot’s Creek residents. Privately, desperate townspeople visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them—until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer.

Decades later, Amber Pendleton is cast in a horror movie inspired by the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek. Amber’s experiences on that set will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career. Amber’s best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a true crime investigator tracks her down to interview her. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her?

The Mercies (Kiran Millwood Hargrave)

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves.

Three years later, Absalom Cornet arrives. He comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young wife, Ursa. In Vardø, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil.

Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft (edited by Jessica Spotswood and Tess Sharpe)

A bruja’s traditional love spell has unexpected results. A witch’s healing hands begin to take life instead of giving it when she ignores her attraction to a fellow witch. In a terrifying future, women are captured by a cabal of men crying witchcraft. In a desolate past, three orphaned sisters prophesize for a murderous king.

From good witches to bad witches, to witches who are a bit of both, this is an anthology of diverse witchy tales from a collection of diverse, feminist authors.