Here are 78 books that In The Company Of Witches fans have personally recommended if you like
In The Company Of Witches.
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I started reading mysteries as a way to avoid studying for final exams as an undergrad. Nemesis by Agatha Christie was my gateway mystery. That was fifty-plus years and many, many mysteries read ago. I managed an independent bookstore for several years and then worked in a public library for twenty more. I especially liked introducing readers to my favorite mysteries in the store and the library. Why mysteries in particular? Because they do something that doesn’t often happen in real life—they restore order. But the best mysteries, to my mind, are the ones that include humor. We need humor in our lives because it restores hope.
Now I’m torn. Agnes Sharp and her housemates are delightful, but a friend of mine tells me that I am Joyce in this book. This series is one of the best I’ve read in the past few years, and this book is one of the best ones in the series.
I’ll gladly join septuagenarians Elizabeth (could she have worked for Scotland Yard?), Ibrahim (a psychologist), Ron (a brawling socialist organizer), and Joyce (gentle and perhaps not as naïve as she seems) at their posh retirement village as they discuss unsolved crimes each Thursday. And I’m definitely there to solve the murder of that local developer. No way the villain will get away from this brilliant gang of sleuths.
A New York Times bestseller | Soon to be a major motion picture from Steven Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment
"Witty, endearing and greatly entertaining." -Wall Street Journal
"Don't trust anyone, including the four septuagenarian sleuths in Osman's own laugh-out-loud whodunit." -Parade
Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves A female cop with her first big case A brutal murder Welcome to... THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club.
As a cozy-style mystery writer, I get to live in a world where I know that everything will work out as it should in the end. I look for this in the books that I read and recommend. Do they give the reader something interesting to ponder as they go along with the sleuth (amateur or “real detective)? My father was a police captain, and I grew up looking at things through the eyes of “the law”, I admit. Most people find comfort reading about a small town where nothing will go too wrong. The bad stuff and the bad people are kept at arm’s length, and all is well.
I was late coming to this author, but once I discovered her I knew I’d go back to her earlier books in the Lady Eleanor Swift series.
In this book, Lady Swift leaves England to see what Manhattan is all about. With her butler, Clifford, (and her dog Gladstone) in tow, she is soon ensconced in a high-end apartment and is giving and attending all of the parties with the rich and famous. But her society status is put on hold when she witnesses the doorman of her building killed in a hit and run.
This is soon followed by another murder connected to the doorman. She, of course, gets involved and is determined to right the wrong. The book is a perfect bit of escapism, written with humor.
Glitzy parties, sightseeing at the Statue of Liberty and strolls through Central Park with Gladstone the bulldog… Lady Eleanor Swift is loving her first trip to the city that never sleeps, until she witnesses a murder!
After crossing from England on the SS Celestiana, Lady Eleanor Swift sets up her home-away-from-home in a lavish apartment in New York City. She is soon the toast of the town, with no high-class soirée complete without her presence. Of course, she drags her butler Clifford and Gladstone the bulldog along to every party too.
But when she witnesses the charming doorman of her…
As a cozy-style mystery writer, I get to live in a world where I know that everything will work out as it should in the end. I look for this in the books that I read and recommend. Do they give the reader something interesting to ponder as they go along with the sleuth (amateur or “real detective)? My father was a police captain, and I grew up looking at things through the eyes of “the law”, I admit. Most people find comfort reading about a small town where nothing will go too wrong. The bad stuff and the bad people are kept at arm’s length, and all is well.
Who can resist a three-book series set in the Scottish Highlands? Travers does not disappoint we lovers of all things Scottish.
She sets this book in Edinburgh, 1911. The main character does something uncommon for women to do at that time—she takes a family inheritance and opens a detective agency. She also brings along Daisy, her lady’s maid.
When their first case leads them into the Highland society, the Duchess of Duddington employs them to ferret out a jewel thief. They go undercover to hunt for the thief, but soon realize they are hunting for a killer. This book blended the political and cultural reality of the day, but did it seamlessly.
I learned a few things while following Maud and Daisy around that fancy house in the Highlands.
‘Had me hooked… Loved!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Delightful… Kept me on the edge of my seat’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Wonderful… Had me giggling’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘I really loved this… Fantastic’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘I absolutely adored this… Brilliant’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Move over Holmes and Watson, there’s a new detective duo in town!
Edinburgh, 1911: When headstrong Maud McIntyre decides to pour her inheritance into starting her very own detective agency, she asks her lady’s maid, Daisy, to form The Scottish Ladies’ Detective Agency. After all, she knows they have a better brain for these things than most men!
Maud and Daisy never dreamed that their first case would…
Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can…
As a cozy-style mystery writer, I get to live in a world where I know that everything will work out as it should in the end. I look for this in the books that I read and recommend. Do they give the reader something interesting to ponder as they go along with the sleuth (amateur or “real detective)? My father was a police captain, and I grew up looking at things through the eyes of “the law”, I admit. Most people find comfort reading about a small town where nothing will go too wrong. The bad stuff and the bad people are kept at arm’s length, and all is well.
Written in the style of M.C. Beaton, this book is a perfect English murder mystery.
The idea of a village fete itself has always been alluring to me. I put myself in the story and I’m right at home in the village and celebration at Berrywick House. I blame my British DNA. As in any good cozy, the most irritating member of the community ends up dead, and no exception here.
The main character, Julia, is not only concerned with a murder—or two, but she’s also afraid their peaceful village will be forever ruined. Like all great amateur sleuths, she gets involved. Bird paints a picture of a perfect English village. Add a dog, her Labrador, Jake, and well, sign me up.
Julia Bird can’t wait to attend the annual village party at the local stately home, with its tea tents, cake stalls, and… dead body in the maze?
The annual village celebration at Berrywick House is underway, complete with over-decorated cake stalls, fiercely contested flower competitions, and even a maze for the disappointed losers to hide in. Julia Bird, now a well-known – even notorious – member of the community, with her trusty Labrador Jake, has thrown herself headlong into the festivities. But her reputation for adding drama to any event stands up yet again when she discovers a dead body…
Since I was a child I have viewed the world differently. I dreamed of magical worlds, and I always was curious to find answers to questions that were hard to find. When I began to question a local legend about the Lady in White, I had to know more. I spent countless days researching to find anything about this mystery lady. Unfortunately, I never did find out who the Lady in White was, but I did find information on every one of her so-called victims. With a handful of real-life events, and a lot of imagination, my Lady in White series was born.
I love stories that are based on legends, myths, and folklore. This one is the latter.
Took is the first book that opened my mind to folklore of witches and witchcraft. If finding a cabin in the woods with bones and artifacts inside didn’t bring chills down my spine, then the mysterious storyline that followed definitely did. The suspense of the book kept my mind captive till the very end!
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What is this book about?
Thirteen year old Daniel Anderson doesn't believe Brody Mason's crazy stories about the ghost witch who lives up on Brewster's Hill with Bloody Bones, her man eating razorback hog. He figures Brody's probably just trying to scare him since he's the new kid ...a "stuck-up snot" from Connecticut. But Daniel's seven year old sister Erica has become more and more withdrawn, talking to her lookalike doll. When she disappears into the woods one day, he knows something is terribly wrong. Did the witch strike? Has Erica been "took"?
Nearly forty years ago, as a young poet, I started going to a storytelling circle in Toronto, thinking it would be a good venue to recite my poems. What I heard there awakened something in me. When I was a child, my parents read me wonder tales, and I soon began to read them on my own. Now I was hearing these stories, the way they were heard for millennia before anyone wrote them down. Today, I am a storyteller, I am married, and I am a professor who teaches a course on storytelling and writes about stories – all because of those weekly gatherings years ago and the storytellers there.
Stories can be dangerous. People who love storytelling are fascinated by Newfoundland, where isolation nourished a rich oral culture (in a distinct English dialect).
Barbara Rieti introduces many colourful Newfoundlanders and the stories they have to tell – but not about long-ago times. These stories are about witches who live among us, or who are dead but well-remembered.
You can imagine how dangerous it might be to be called a witch, even with witch-burning gone out of fashion. (In its place, people cast spells to give witches the burning pain of bladder infections.) But “witches” could also use their reputations to get things they needed.
The author is very scholarly and does not believe there is any real witchcraft or magic behind these stories – but some of them left me wondering!
There is a little-known tradition of witch lore in Newfoundland culture. Those believed to have the power to influence the fortunes of others are not mythological characters but neighbours, relations, or even friends. Drawing from her own interviews and a wealth of material from the Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive, Barbara Rieti explores the range and depth of Newfoundland witch tradition, looking at why certain people acquired reputations as witches, and why others considered themselves bewitched. The tales that emerge - despite their seemingly fantastic elements of spells and black heart books, hags, and healing charms - concern everyday…
Cleo Cooper, a cross-cultural psychology professor, is living the dream on the Big Island of Hawaii. With ocean-dipping weekends, she enjoys her dog, her job, and her boyfriend Ben - until the day she’s on a research vessel and a dead body is caught in the dragline.
There's magic in a book that opens a window to the lives of ordinary people who lived in a time and place very different from our own. That’s why I enjoy exploring these stories. The narratives of the famous are often polished to the point that all the odd edges of a delicious pea soup or a long trip in uncomfortable boots are worn away. But I love these little details: how certain boarding house rules meant women had no place to stay when Jack the Ripper was prowling, or how a journal might consist of rag paper with a hand-stitched binding. They show us a distant era, but also reinforce our common humanity.
Different stylistically than the other books on the list, The Witch of Eye is a collection of lyric essays about those accused of witchcraft. In its pages, we meet Lisbet Nypan of Norway, who cured patients using a “ritual of salt” only to be put on trial in the late 1600s, and the German midwife Walpurga Hausmannin, who allegedly coupled with the devil in the clothes of the neighborhood corn farmer. The sentences are dense and hypnotic, transporting readers into fields and courtrooms. One essay begins by describing the language of magic: “You begin a spell with an invocation like Hear me or I beseech you or Oh friend or Listen.” Let yourself be drawn in.
This amazingly wise and nimble collection investigates the horrors inflicted on so-called "witches" of the past. The Witch of Eye unearths salves, potions, and spells meant to heal, yet interpreted by inquisitors as evidence of evil. The author describes torture and forced confessions alongside accounts of gentleness of legendary midwives. In one essay about a trial, we learn through folklore that Jesus's mother was a midwife who cured her own son's rheumatism. In other essays there are subtle parallels to contemporary discourse around abortion and environmental destruction. Nuernberger weaves in her own experiences, too. There's an ironic look at her…
It’s not an exaggeration to say that finding a path toward a spiritual belief that accepted me for who I am was a lifelong pursuit for me. As someone who felt pushed out by the Catholic Church for my transness, I wanted to find something that kept some of those traditions but built on them in a way that made sense to me and included me. Italian-American folk magic had room for people like me in a way that organized religion never did. The magical memoirs of contemporary writers inspired me to synthesize what I’d learned into my own grimoire/memoir.
I was amazed and inspired by the places that Elissa Washuta went with this book. Not only is it about living in a potentially haunted home and the magic that the author engages with, but also, somehow, about historical markers, The Oregon Trail, and indigeneity.
I felt like I was traveling along with Elissa Washuta’s brilliant mind as she made her way through all these seemingly disparate but ultimately very connected topics.
A TIME, NPR, New York Public Library, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Entropy Best Book of the Year
"Beguiling and haunting. . . . Washuta's voice sears itself onto the skin." ―The New York Times Book Review
Bracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists.
Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, “starter witch kits” of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and…
I’m a historian who wants to know: Why did people burn other people at the stake for what we think was an impossible crime? It seems so unjust; indeed it was unjust. I mention Amnesty International in my book; as well as being a professional historian, I’ve been writing letters for Amnesty for many years, trying to rectify injustice. Yet witch-hunting made sense to the perpetrators; they weren’t simply ‘wicked’ or ‘crazed’ or ‘ignorant’. We need to understand them on many levels, from the most erudite demonology, all the way down to psychological processes by which we identify enemies. The five books I’ve chosen move gradually downwards, in order, from the highest to the deepest level.
As well as the village witch, we have what might be called the ‘folkloric witch’, and other folkloric traditions.
When interrogators asked witchcraft suspects about the Devil, the answers sometimes surprised them. They uncovered beliefs about nature spirits, practices of magical healing and divination, and visionary experience of otherworlds.
Some of this material fed into ideas about the witches’ sabbat, but these beliefs, practices, and visions were not necessarily about ‘witchcraft’ at all. Ronald Hutton’s ambitious book surveys these beliefs, practices, and visions.
He ranges far back into the ancient history of Europe – and adjacent regions, exploring traditions of ceremonial magic from ancient Egypt. If the idea of the witch is frightening, it is partly because of the folklore brought together in this book.
Why have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe's history
"Traces the idea of witches far beyond the Salem witch trials to beliefs and attitudes about witches around the world throughout history."-Los Angeles Times
The witch came to prominence-and often a painful death-in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early-modern stake.
This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective…
Buried Secrets. A web of deceit, betrayal, and danger. Can she survive her fight for justice and truth? Laura thought she knew everything about her late husband before he died. Now, her life and the lives of those she loves are in danger. As Laura delves into his previous role…
As a Scottish born Australian writer I grew up reading tales from Celtic and Norse mythology and always wanted them to be fact. With a passion for history, including tales of lost civilizations, and with a deeply rooted love of story, I have spent decades exploring how myth and story intertwine. Where do our stories come from? I have fantasized for many hours about what it would be like if there was an older magical world beneath ours. My first novel, The Lost Soul, began when I asked myself one question: What if myth was true?
Anne Bishop weaves European myth and historical witch-hunting into a fantastical tale of Fae, Witches, and those without magic. All three books in this series are unputdownable. So real is the imagery and the variety of characters, each with their own blend of magic and relationship to the natural world, that no matter how dark the tale gets, I can’t stop reading.
Tir Alainn blends the natural, spiritual and physical world of myth into a grassroots world with characters that live and die for what they believe. With a strong moral core to the story, the richness of myth brings the inhabitants of Tir Alainn to life. An enchanting dark fantasy trilogy that is a must-read.
The first novel in New York Times bestselling author Anne Bishop's Tir Alainn Trilogy.
The youngest in a long line of witches, Ari senses that things are changing—changing for the worse. For generations, her kin have tended the Old Places, keeping the land safe and fertile. But with the Summer Moon, the mood of her neighbors has soured. And Ari is no longer safe.
The Fae have long ignored what occurs in the mortal world, passing through on their shadowy roads only long enough to amuse themselves. But the roads are slowly disappearing, leaving the Fae Clans isolated and alone.…
