10 Best Witchy Novels of the Last Decade

Unlike other classic magical entities in literature—ghosts, vampires, dragons, etc.—witches aren’t bound by one genre. As such, it’s hard to pin down exactly what makes a great witchy novel. Sometimes, it’s strong fantasy world-building that immerses readers in a magical realm. Sometimes it’s a masterful grasp of real-life witchy traditions, seamlessly incorporated into a magical realist story. Sometimes it’s bone-chilling Gothic horror. But if there’s one thing all great witchy stories have in common, it’s the ability, no matter the genre or setting, to make magic feel completely real.

That's why classic literature, films, and TV shows have used witches in so many different ways; there have been cozy romances, witch queens like the White Witch of Narnia fame, and the good-natured rom-com witchy heroes of Practical Magic. Here are the best witchy novels of the past ten years, albeit recognizing that sheer diversity.

Witches

By Brenda Lozano (2022)

This inaugural translation of Brenda Lozano’s work is a quintessentially Mexican take on the witch novel. It follows Zoe, an investigative journalist reporting on the murder of Paloma, a beloved curandera found dead after hinting at the existence of a book of magic. Zoe’s reporting takes her to a remote mountain village, where Paloma’s surviving cousin carries on her magical practices and may hold information about her death.

But Lozano isn’t interested in a straightforward murder-mystery plot, especially not when magic is involved. Instead, what she weaves in its place feels as magical and sacred as the practices Feliciana is reluctant to share. Steeped in the tradition of magical realism, Lozano crafts the dueling narratives of two women, one who understands the world through hard facts and reporting, the other who understands it through mysticism, whose fates are more intertwined than they could ever imagine.

You can purchase Witches here.

Black Candle Women

By Diane Marie Brown (2023)

There are so many movies like Practical Magic 2, and the same is true of books; Black Candle Women is the perfect example of a tremendous novel that scratches the same kind of itch. Diane Marie Brown’s take on the multi-generational witch novel reads like a refreshing reimagining of that cult classic, transposed into an all-new setting.

Like the Owens sisters, this family prefers to keep to themselves in the historical home they share, practicing magic far from their neighbors’ prying eyes. They, too, are afflicted with a generational curse: every one of their romantic partners dies early. Unlike their predecessors, they’re ready to do something about it.

For all its similarities to the gold standard of family witch stories, Brown exercises full control over her narrative, ensuring its twists feel surprising and unique even if its premise feels familiar. Her take is a time-traveling epic that spreads its magic across the country, tracking three generations of magical women as they navigate through—and eventually out of—a family curse.

You can purchase Black Candle Women here.

VenCo

By Cherie Dimaline (2023)

Though Lucky St. James' Métis family practiced magic generations ago, the tradition evaporated before it reached her. Now she and her grandmother face eviction. Despite this heavy premise, however, VenCo is disarmingly funny. When Lucky discovers a strange artifact in her wall that connects her to an underground coven, this book transforms into a madcap cross-country adventure.

Dimaline’s storytelling drips with satire, imagining a coven that operates as a corporate conglomerate, laundering money in search of a chosen one who will usher in a new age of magic. For Lucky, magic could be the way out of her dire straits. But a centuries-old witch hunter now stalks her every move, and to capitalize on her newfound powers, Lucky and her grandmother must race across the country to New Orleans before their last hope goes up in flames.

Along the way, VenCo shapeshifts into many different forms: a timely satire about girlboss feminism and corporate greed, a classic Chosen One fantasy, and an excellent road trip novel.

You can purchase VenCo here.

The Bewitching

By Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2025)

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is constantly experimenting with ways to retool classic horror stories, but this book—more ghost story than explicit witch tale—reads like a conversation with her own literary legacy.

Grad student Minerva grew up hearing ghost stories from her great-grandmother, and now studies them for her thesis on Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure horror writer from decades ago. But there’s a secret awaiting her in Tremblay’s archive: her most famous horror novel was inspired by true events—and whatever haunted her might be coming for Minerva next.

Rather than recreating a classic horror novel outright, as she did in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, or reimagining classic tropes in a new setting, as she did in Mexican Gothic, here, Moreno-Garcia spins a tale in which horror stories themselves are the spirits haunting her narrator. The Bewitching is unlike anything Moreno-Garcia has ever written, and yet it feels like seeing this modern icon of horror in her most realized form.

You can purchase The Bewitching here.

The Wax Child

By Olga Ravn (2025)

This story unfolds like the darkest possible ending to Wicker: in a small Danish village in 1620, unmarried Christenze forms a human baby from beeswax and carries it everywhere until it gains sentience. It is an ostensible act of magic, and one her village is bent on punishing as violently as possible.

The Wax Child has a basis in true history: Ravn drew inspiration from the real Christenze Krukow, a Danish noblewoman executed for witchcraft in 1621. But what sets this novel apart from other witch-trial stories is that Ravn creates no mystery about whether her version of Christenze is guilty of practicing magic—she even tells this creeping, suspenseful tale from the perspective of the wax child itself.

Instead, Ravn is uninterested in softening Christenze and the many accused witches who surround her, much less absolving them. She allows them the full extent of their Gothic eeriness. She simply recognizes that the label of “witch,” and the stigma that came with it, were darker than any woman could deserve.

You can purchase The Wax Child here.

Witchcraft For Wayward Girls

By Grady Hendrix (2025)

Set in 1970, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls operates on the knowledge that the patriarchal instinct that triggered the Salem Witch Trials didn’t die, but reinvented itself. Three centuries after Puritans burned innocent women at the stake in Massachusetts, Hendrix’s novel picks up at an institution in St. Augustine, Florida, where conservative families banish their unwed, pregnant daughters to give birth in secret and have their children taken away.

There, a dozen pregnant teenagers meet under the searing surveillance of their house mother, Miss Wellwood. They're all but resigned to this tragic fate, until one discovers a book of magic and, with it, a way to take their power back. As with all Hendrix novels, however, crossing paths with the supernatural comes at a steep cost.

You can purchase Witchcraft for Wayward Girls here.

A Good Person

By Kirsten King (2026)

The only actual witch in this novel is such a minor character that we never encounter her directly, but magic haunts the narrative nonetheless. Our protagonist, Lillian, isn't exactly magical, but her belief that she accidentally committed an irreversible act of dark magic hangs over her like a guillotine. At 29, she was living a relatively mundane, definitively non-magical life as a corporate marketing girlie, until the night she drunkenly hexed her ex-situationship, then woke up to a news alert that he’d been murdered.

Lillian didn’t mean to hurt Henry—she merely intended to follow her favorite witch influencer’s tutorial and cast a spell that would make him regret everything. This is where King’s cleverness truly shines: not having intended to do something this bad doesn’t mean Lillian is a good person, either. King excels at writing characters who are as morally grey as they are uproariously funny, and this darkly comic story about an unhinged not-quite-witch is truly magical.

You can purchase A Good Person here.

She Made Herself A Monster

By Anna Kovatcheva (2026)

Though it’s certainly witchy and Gothic, She Made Herself a Monster is more concerned with the machinations of urban legends and folklore than actual magic.

Set in 19th-century Bulgaria, the novel follows a woman who makes her living by playing into superstition: if Yana cannot convince people not to blame so-called “witches” for their unexplained tragedies, she can at least capitalize on their fear by billing herself as a monster hunter. Then she meets Anka, a teen girl whose village is ready to cast her out as a witch. Their partnership could be mutually beneficial: Yana could utilize the suspicion to stage her next hoax, and Anka could use the hoax as a diversion to make her escape—if their plan doesn’t unleash a real dark magic entity in their wake.

This book reads almost like a Western epic: a traveling grifter moves from desolate small town to desolate small town, staging dangerous occurrences for the glory of snuffing them out. But it also feels like the most rage-filled of Gothic tales: one about two women who refuse to be made monsters by the narrative any longer.

You can purchase She Made Herself A Monster here.

Such Familiar Magic

By Natasha Ngan (2027)

The witchy novel is not confined to horror or historical fiction. In fact, some of its best specimens are warm, inviting romances, like Practical Magic or Meg Shaffer’s The Book Witch. Natasha Ngan’s adult fiction debut falls squarely into that category while keeping the vivid, mystical spirit of her earlier YA novels alive.

Think of this book as a slightly more literary take on a Hallmark love story. Set in a quiet, picturesque seaside town in England, Such Familiar Magic follows Laila Chu, a hard-working Londoner who returns home each weekend to keep up her British Chinese family’s magical traditions. When Laila makes a grave mistake during an ancient ritual, there’s only one witch she can turn to—and he happens to be her childhood nemesis. Magical hijinks and very cozy romance ensue.

Such Familiar Magic releases January 12, 2027. You can pre-order it here.

Witches Three

By Kristin Judd (2027)

It would be very difficult to write about witches, even in fiction, without considering the very real colonial legacy of witch trials, the centuries-long history of killing women in the name of stopping “witchcraft.” Luckily, Kristin Judd’s next novel does both, blending magic and history for a novel as much about witch hunts as it is about actual witches.

Told in three timelines—1650, 1692, and 1959—Witches Three follows three related women as they uncover a shared, dormant power while fighting for survival in societies bent on casting out women who don’t conform. This is a story about escaping oppression, making peace with difference, and reconciling the generational traumas we can’t undo—but it’s also the story of three supernatural beings learning to harness the power they’ve been taught to bury.

Witches Three releases January 12, 2027. You can pre-order it here.