Here are 87 books that Practical Magic fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been fascinated with the extraordinary ever since I read Madeleine L ’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time in middle school.I was also enchanted by Dorothy’s trip from black-and-white Kansas into colorful Oz. I once heard Neil Gaiman mention the “hyperreality” of life, and I thought, Yes!That’s how I want to see the world—the magic everywhere.I voraciously read not only magical realism books but also fantasy. These stories heighten my awareness of the wonder in everything and in everyone, and they deepen the richness of the stories I tell and write.
Even before it was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, Chocolat entranced readers with its mix of hedonism, whimsy, and, of course, chocolate.
In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows.
Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch?
Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation,…
I have been studying Celtic myth and history since I was in college and took a class on Arthurian literature. Drawing heavily from Irish and Welsh lore to build my “land beyond the veil” known as the Five Quarters, I have always been intrigued by the Celtic view of the land of the dead as a distinct world to which we go and then return, like two sides of the mirrored surface of a well. I hope you enjoy these mythic fantasy books as much as I did!
I loved this book as much for the writing itself as the story. Miller creates a lush world of numinous magic.
I could not stop listening to this retelling of the life of Circe. She was the daughter of the sun god and the most feared sorceress of her time. She was given a bad rap by history, but I felt like I understood her and could see into her heart and mind.
In addition, the worldbuilding is wonderful. I felt like I was taken to ancient Greece.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens…
In my high school creative writing class, my teacher once said that good writing was a bit like looking at a star. If you look directly at it, it gets a little fuzzy and hard to see. But if you look just off to the side, the star becomes vivid and clear. That, to me, is exactly the power of spooky stories for young readers. We all deal with monsters, to varying degrees, throughout our lives. Even kids. But if we look at it just off to the side, through the angle of a fun, spooky story, those monsters suddenly become much more comprehensible. More faceable. More beatable.
It’s been said by smarter people than me how writing horror for kids isn’t about scaring them, it’s about showing them how brave they are.
A Monster Calls is the perfect illustration of that. The scariness and the spookiness are a stand-in for the real-life horrors that this kid is facing. Kids deal with a lot, and this book is the perfect example of how to survive when the worst happens.
The artwork too—wow! I wish I could get some of this artwork to hang on my walls. Absolutely gorgeous book.
The bestselling novel and major film about love, loss and hope from the twice Carnegie Medal-winning Patrick Ness.
Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window. It's ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking…
A contemporary romance novel about second chances, love in the workplace, and balancing single parenthood with a career. Bailey Grant and Fox Goodman have given up on love. They’re working hard, they’re raising kids—romance is the last thing on their minds. Until they get seated next to each other on a flight and realize they have more in common than just the company where they work.
But can a VP date the CEO? How will they make it work? Wait and see how sparks fly in this uplifting, feel-good, dual-narrative romantic read!
Bailey Even from afar, you could feel it: the man's ever-present, effortless charm, looks, and for lack of a better word, swagger. Everyone—and by everyone, I meant every female at Havelin—had speculated about his personal life. We all knew he had two sons, but what about a wife? Not that I cared. I was VP of Quality, a widow, and a mother raising two teenage daughters. Love was the last thing on my mind.
Fox She was staggeringly beautiful. And she didn’t know it. Not even in the slightest. Not a clue. I’d never felt like this before. Even more…
Rabbit Hole is about Teddy’s obsession with her sister Angie’s cold-case disappearance. When Angie was alive, she was angry and difficult, but Teddy still misses her. While writing the book, I thought a lot about my relationships with my own sisters and how unique that particular bond is. I love books that capture the at-times-uncomfortable closeness of sisterhood and grapple with its power.
Austen writes sisters like no one else, and the dynamic between tempestuous Marianne and practical Elinor is the template for so many novels that have followed.
Austen keeps the two sisters from becoming caricatures by making them more alike than different, and the love that anchors their relationship is at the heart of the novel.
I first read this as a freshman in college, and I still think about it every time I’m writing sisters. A classic.
'The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste' Virginia Woolf
Jane Austen's subtle and witty novel of secrets and suppression, lies and seduction, brilliantly portrays a world where rigid social convention clashes with the impulses of the heart. It tells the story of two very different sisters who find themselves thrown into an unkind world when their father dies. Marianne, wild and impulsive, falls dangerously in love, while Elinor suffers her own private heartbreak but conceals her true feelings, even from those closest to her.
Two of my three novels have young women protagonists. I find young adulthood a fascinating time in women’s lives and I enjoy creating a character and putting her in a historical setting. The Second World War offers fertile ground for storytelling, and I grew up south of London after the war. My father’s unpublished memoir, in which he describes an event that he experienced in the war, inspired me to write about it, but I told the story through the eyes of the protagonist, Kate.
I loved the three-part format of this book divided by time periods. The first part, set in 1935, describes an event that took place on a hot summer day in the grounds of the family’s country house garden. It’s seen from the different perspectives of thirteen-year-old Briony and her older sister Cecelia. The story evolves from there in parts two and three in unpredictable and devastating ways.
I appreciated the book’s in-depth exploration of the power of a lie and the devastating consequences of that lie. This psychological study of adult Briony’s guilt and subsequent atonement eloquently depicts how war makes demands of even the most privileged citizens.
On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a…
I’ve been reading paranormal fiction for as long as I can remember and it’s always been my favorite genre. I love sci-fi and fantasy as well, but keep coming back to paranormal. I’ve been enjoying authors like Terry Pratchett, Phillip Pullman, Guy Gavriel Kay since middle school, and will happily inhale any story that takes me out of reality into a world where magic is real and the princess saves herself. Now that I’m writing my own joyful escapes into this genre, it feels extra special to get to be a part of this club and create my own magical world for readers to enjoy!
While True Blood saw this series come to life on the small screen, the books are a lighter and deeper option for anyone who loved the show but wants to get more background info.
I read this series before the show came out and thoroughly enjoyed all the funny bits that weren’t as prevalent in the HBO version. Sookie was funny and fierce as I recall, which is an excellent combo for a leading lady to be.
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much - not because she's not pretty - she's a very cute bubbly blonde - or not interested in a social life. She really is ...but Sookie's got a bit of a disability. She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill: he's tall, he's dark and he's handsome - and Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting all her life for. But Bill has…
I’ve been fascinated by sisters, siblings, and my place in the family since I was old enough to realize I had an older sister and a younger brother. I asked my parents a lot of questions. Why am I blonde? Why is my sister taller? Lots of questions my parents didn’t have answers for. At school in biology, we studied genes, familial traits, and nature versus nurture. I was fascinated, and still am today. Why does my sister behave the way she does? Why do I? Is it because of our upbringing, or was she just born with an aversion to cheese? I wanted to know the answers. I’m still searching.
I first read this book as a teenager but didn’t appreciate Louisa May Alcott’s gift for storytelling until years later, when I reread it.
This time, I didn’t want the story to end because I’d fallen in love with the four March sisters Jo, Beth, Meg, and Amy. I laughed. I cried. Though fictional characters and separated by hundreds of years, the March sisters felt real to me, and I was a little bereft at the end of their story.
Along with universal themes of love, betrayal, anger, lust, revenge, and death, Little Women deftly portrays each sister’s struggles and aspirations and explores the conflicts each sister has between personal ambition, familial responsibility, and wanting to embrace the unknown.
For one brief moment, I wished I had more than one sister…and then I came to my senses.
Louisa May Alcott shares the innocence of girlhood in this classic coming of age story about four sisters-Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
In picturesque nineteenth-century New England, tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy are responsible for keeping a home while their father is off to war. At the same time, they must come to terms with their individual personalities-and make the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It can all be quite a challenge. But the March sisters, however different, are nurtured by their wise and beloved Marmee, bound by their love for each other and the feminine…
As a debut novelist at the age of fifty-seven, I’ve spent most of my life as a reader, not an author. My love of reading began with The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and flourished when I discovered the genre of fantasy with The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin. Is it any wonder I giggle with delight when I stumble upon a book that makes me believe in magic again? When an author weaves the supernatural into their story in a natural way, my expectations shift, and my heart opens to the power of the unknown to teach me something new and take me somewhere extraordinary.
I love books about books, so I was thrilled when Oxford's Bodleian Library and a bewitched alchemical manuscript turned up as the linchpin of this enchanting love story between a vampire and a reluctant witch.
While this story was made into a television series, do yourself a favor and read the entire trilogy. Harkness creates a compelling framework of history and heroics, love and loss, and friendship and betrayal for her underworld creatures to inhabit. And these are not your typical creatures of the night, but accomplished scholars, physicians, and scientists.
This book is one of those rare novels I wish I could read again for the first time and fall under its magical and mesmerizing spell anew.
In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.
I learned to read when I was three and the first book I remember reading was Ozma of Oz, which featured some great witches (even though they weren’t called that). I’ve been fascinated by women using magic to change the world around them ever since, and books about witches have remained a staple of my reading diet. As an adult, I learned more about the theory and practice of witchcraft and even spent some time in a coven. These days, I guess you’d call me more of a hedgewitch; I maintain no formal practice, just try to live in “a good way” like my Ojibwe ancestors taught.
YA books about witches promise teen angst, magic, and mayhem, and Barry’s book does not disappoint.
One thing that really makes Barry’s book stand out is the unique POV she uses. The girls on the 1989 Danvers High School Women’s Varsity Field Hockey Team sign their names in a notebook, initiating a spell to make their team finally start winning.
After that, they become a new entity, which is both all of them and something else entirely – the winning team. Or is it?
Barry’s POV places us in the minds of all the girls at the same time, but instead of being confusing, it makes the magic come to life on the page. GenXers (like me) who were in sports/music programs will particularly enjoy this one.
In the town of Danvers, Massachusetts, home of the original 1692 witch trials, the 1989 Danvers Falcons will do anything to make it to the state finals—even if it means tapping into some devilishly dark powers.
Against a background of irresistible 1980s iconography, Quan Barry expertly weaves together the individual and collective progress of this enchanted team as they storm their way through an unforgettable season.
Helmed by good-girl captain Abby Putnam (a descendant of the infamous Salem accuser Ann Putnam) and her co-captain Jen Fiorenza (whose bleached blond “Claw” sees and knows all), the Falcons prove to be wily,…
I love to tell stories, a love I discovered ever since I was a kid listening to my family who love to tell stories. Mine defy genres because the voice and characters guide me into how their tales should be told. I've written mysteries, YA and middle-grade books, a graphic novel, and courtroom drama. My newest book is driven by the character of Margaret Adams, who's seeking a new life after years of being buried alive with sometimes hilarious results. I just had to listen...
How can you not love Bridget? How she stumbles through life, all the while trying so hard to be cool. Searching for a second chance at love despite betrayals and humiliations.
Meanwhile, she notes her days and nights in her diary–the fluctuating weight, cigarette and cocktail counts, and the worry about ending up alone and being eaten by wild dogs. The result is a character so human and funny that it hurts. Write on, Bridget.
A dazzlingly urban satire on modern relationships? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something?
As Bridget documents her struggles through the social minefield of her thirties and tries to weigh up the eternal question (Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy?), she turns for support to four indispensable friends: Shazzer, Jude, Tom and a bottle of chardonnay.
Welcome to Bridget's first diary: mercilessly funny, endlessly touching and utterly addictive.
Helen Fielding's first Bridget Jones novel, Bridget Jones's Diary, sparked a phenomenon that has seen…
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