Here are 100 books that The Last Witch fans have personally recommended if you like
The Last Witch.
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I am a bit of a contradiction in that I am a Christian pastor but also a horror aficionado. I love all things sci-fi and horror. My fascination with these genres stems from childhood, when I stumbled upon Star Wars, the old Addams Family cartoons, and even Scooby Doo. As I matured, my love of reading grew, and I soon consumed literature like a Dyson, especially sci-fi and horror. I often joke about how the odd combo of my two biggest writing influences, Stephen King (I’ve read his entire bibliography) and C.S. Lewis, perfectly sums up my character, and I think that’s what makes me perfect for this recommendation.
The most iconic and somehow most misrepresented vampire story of all time. I read this book because it was iconic and for no other reason. It was not long before I began to see this book's Christian themes and messages. Though the book may not be explicitly Christian, the influences and messages are most apparent in Mina Harker.
I loved how the character of Mina becomes a prototype of what people would eventually call “The Final Girl”, not because of her physical strength or survival instincts, but because of her unwavering faith in God. I knew this was essentially a story of good and evil, but I was wonderfully surprised by this being a story of faith vs flesh and corruption vs holiness.
28
authors picked
Dracula
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
17.
What is this book about?
'The very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years' Arthur Conan Doyle
A masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also probes identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. It begins when Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, and makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England - an unmanned ship is wrecked; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master' - and a determined group of adversaries…
From an early age, I have been fascinated with anything supernatural and occult. My Aunt would read my palm, and then, as a teenager, I would visit clairvoyants to see what the future held for me. As I grew older, I found I had an ability, a gift of seership, and after reading many books, embarked on my pagan journey, from which I have never looked back, and am now studying Druidry,which is very much nature-based. I hope you love the books on this list as much as I do!
I love this book because, after a period when I could never find the time to read, I picked it up in my local supermarket, and my love affair with reading began all over again. Being a huge fan of Dracula, I was intrigued to discover if this title would carry the same level of eeriness, and I was delighted to find that it did!
The story provokes thoughts of ‘Could this be real?’ I finished it early one winter morning and found myself a little nervous to step outside into the darkness to call my dog in, which is a rarity for me. It was a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit jumpy, read.
'Reading Dracul is like watching a classic vampire film . . . a terrifying read' R. L. Stine
Inspired by the notes DRACULA's creator left behind, Dracul is a riveting, heart-stoppingly scary novel of Gothic suspense . . . ___ Dracul reveals not only the true origins of Dracula himself, but also of his creator, Bram Stoker . . . and of the elusive, enigmatic woman who connects them.
It is 1868, and a 21-year-old Bram Stoker has locked himself inside an abbey's tower to confront a vile and ungodly beast. He…
From an early age, I have been fascinated with anything supernatural and occult. My Aunt would read my palm, and then, as a teenager, I would visit clairvoyants to see what the future held for me. As I grew older, I found I had an ability, a gift of seership, and after reading many books, embarked on my pagan journey, from which I have never looked back, and am now studying Druidry,which is very much nature-based. I hope you love the books on this list as much as I do!
I found myself completely absorbed in the story from the beginning. It was incredibly difficult to put down. Suffice it to say that there were a few overcooked dinners for a few days!
I loved how the author combined elements of the story, supernatural/gangster, and the location, which took me back to my childhood days in London.
I had moments of breath holding anticipation, along with tears of sadness and joy, I found it to be a totally delectable read.
Lydia has always known she has no power, especially next to her infamous and more-than-slightly dodgy family. Which is why she carved her own life as a private investigator far away from London.
When a professional snafu forces her home, the head of the family calls in a favour, and Lydia finds herself investigating the disappearance of her cousin, Maddie.
Soon, Lydia is neck-deep in problems: her new flatmate is a homicidal ghost, the intriguing, but forbidden, DCI Fleet is acting in a distinctly unprofessional manner, and tensions between the old magical families are rising.
From an early age, I have been fascinated with anything supernatural and occult. My Aunt would read my palm, and then, as a teenager, I would visit clairvoyants to see what the future held for me. As I grew older, I found I had an ability, a gift of seership, and after reading many books, embarked on my pagan journey, from which I have never looked back, and am now studying Druidry,which is very much nature-based. I hope you love the books on this list as much as I do!
I was genuinely devastated when I finished the book, which took only two days to finish. It filled my thoughts constantly and was my saving grace through the beginning of the COVID lockdown. I found that absorbing myself into the story and characters was an amazing source of escapism for me.
I loved the way the author introduced the magical realism and locations of the story. It kept me on the edge of my seat, and I laughed a lot along the way!
Did you know that the gods can use mobile phones? They can, and Odin has a message for Conrad
Conrad Clarke, former RAF pilot and alleged gangster gets a text – and a visit – from The Allfather. Odin has a challenge for Conrad: sign up to protect England from wild magick and get a commission in the King’s Watch. All he has to do is find a missing witch. Simple. Conrad never could resist a challenge. Before you can say “Ragnarok”, he’s plunged into a world of gods, mages, witches, dwarves and one very aggressive giant mole. But the…
Maurice Sendak said, "Children do live in fantasy and reality, they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do." In other words, children do the impossible. Growing up, stories where the real and imagined collided were like fresh air when I felt like I couldn't breathe. They've always been important to me, and for many reasons, hold a special place in our literature. Now, as a full-time teacher, writer, and daddy, I get to be on the other side of that joy equation, guiding new readers and writers as they become travelers of the fantastic.
I love this book because it really erases the line between the real and the fantastic. I’ve been a Neil Gaiman fan since Sandman. This is a middle-grade book written for me. The path I took through this book led me back to my childhood and reminded me of Where the Wild Things Are, with its nearly seamless transition between the “real” world and the imagined.
Neil’s done this before with Caroline and the Graveyard. But Ocean is different. Here, I never lose touch with the real world. The turn to fantasy just makes the real world more dangerous. I think that’s an important change. When I was a child, when I daydreamed or pondered the things and people and dark corners that I didn’t understand, when I added the additional layer of the fantastic, it wasn’t really an escape.
'Neil Gaiman's entire body of work is a feat of elegant sorcery. He writes with such assurance and originality that the reader has no choice but to surrender to a waking dream' ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
'Some books just swallow you up, heart and soul' JOANNE HARRIS
'Summons both the powerlessness and wonder of childhood, and the complicated landscape of memory and forgetting' GUARDIAN
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'My favourite response to this book is when people say, 'My childhood was nothing like that - and it was as if…
I’m a novelist who has primarily written in the dark fantasy and horror genre, which often embraces all things autumn. My first novelBlack & Orange, its sequel,Nomads, and supplemental short story collection, Reaping October, all take place in autumn and focus on an encroaching dimension of darkness that would change life as we know it. Halloween isn’t just a holiday, it’s a different existence altogether. Having a love for the season and being its steadfast student, I’ve explored these atmospheric themes for decades. I have a solid opinion on what stories take you there.
Thomas Ligotti writes dark magical realism short stories. The Shadow at the Bottom of the World is an unforgettable collection written by a modern master of atmosphere. His stories rarely have complicated plots, but the feeling they leave you with is the whole point. In the thousands of books I’ve read, I can safely say he writes like no other-- he enshrouds your spirit with dread. The title story showcases a small town that encounters the arrival of a threatening breed of darkness. Written with the stunning imagery of Bradbury, the mysticism of Lovecraft, and the disquieting tone of William S. Burroughs, this collection will have you brightening the blaze in the fireplace, just to make the shadows retreat.
A longtime Lovecraft devotee, who has extended the weird tale to the next level via the likes of Borges and Burroughs, Thomas Ligotti is usually published as part of a general anthology of horror writers. But now Ligotti has pulled together a collection of his favorite fiction, both old and new, representing his best and most characteristic works.
Thomas Ligotti's stories are perhaps best described as dark magical realism. Many of his stories center on the distorted perspective of a frequently doomed narrator. The title story, "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World," reimagines a kind of Bradbury-like small…
Since I was a little boy, long before I dreamed of becoming a Daoist monk, I sensed that there was far more beneath the pond of life than on the surface. I remember feeling jealous of a little turtle I saw in the Connecticut River. Why couldn’t I pop out of my world and see what was happening above, but he could? My spiritual questing led me to Asia and also deep into myself. Writing magical realism does not feel like engaging a fantasy; it feels like I can finally share how the world really is.
As both a novelist and a monk whose life focuses on blending the material and spiritual, I consider this a very important work. Despite a privileged Jewish upbringing in New York City, Latin culture has forever been an important part of my life. The fact is, I’ve always been surrounded by South American friends and spent time in South America in my teen years.
This book brings to life the mystical heart of so much that drives South American culture, revealing it in a way that pulls you straight into the arms of a parallel world, or if not parallel, then one that exists both above and below what we superficially see and feel. I find it a great read and one that remains alive in my imagination year after year.
“Spectacular...An absorbing and distinguished work...The House of the Spirits with its all-informing, generous, and humane sensibility, is a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present, and future of Latin America.” —The New York Times Book Review
Our Shared Shelf, Emma Watson Goodreads Book Club Pick November/December 2020!
The House of the Spirits, the unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world’s most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political…
I was a student in 1968-71 (see photo) and the memories of that vanished world still haunt me. When I was supposed to be studying relativity and topology I was reading Blake and Jung, Marcuse and Mao—all misfits in their own way. After a long and undistinguished career as a mathematics lecturer in far-flung locations—Lesotho, New Guinea, Uxbridge—I retired in 2019 to write speculative comic fiction which would bring the Swinging Sixties back to life. Something of a misfit myself, I look at today's world and ask despairingly, “Is this really happening?” The books on my list provide me some solace.
A friend recommended this book when I told her about my Shepherd theme. A neurotic fugitive, hiding on a deserted island, discovers that he is not alone. This novella is classed as magical realism—there’s a foreword by Borges—but like my book it eventually provides a scientific explanation for the strange occurrences. And like almost all my other choices, it’s a first-person narration, so we are kept wondering how much is true. It flags a bit after the initial premise, but once the revelations start, it grips you. Amazingly for a book written in 1964, its speculations address issues at the forefront of digital technology and science today. I won’t say more, except: don’t read the introduction or foreword, which contain plot spoilers!
Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of the Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.
Inspired by Bioy Casares's fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped…
As an author and activist, I use fiction as a way of exploring social issues which mean a lot to me. As a woman of color, that means writing protagonists who encounter sexism, racism, class, and geographic inequality—but who combat those injustices in inventive and heroic ways. For me, the story is always about being human: trying to understand why a character acts a certain way in a certain situation. After all, aren’t we all trying to pursue our own desires against a backdrop of societal expectations? A good story—whether fiction or non-fiction—brings these conflicts to emotional, vivid life, and roots them in a reality we can all relate to.
I loved this atmospheric debut, often described as a collection of interlinked short stories. Set on an isolated group of islands off the coast of Virginia, the stories span more than two centuries of the same family’s history: from the 19th century and far ahead into a post-apocalyptic, post-pandemic future. There are intimations that a supernatural ‘second sight’ runs in the family and the book’s Southern Gothic vibe is nothing short of intriguing. But for all the hints of magic realism, the focus on female characters contending with obstacles of class and gender at different points in history is rooted in an understandable reality. Beautifully written descriptions of the natural environment, poignant characters, and local color all demonstrate Taylor’s imagination to be visionary and impressive.
An ambitious, Baileys prize-nominated debut set in an unforgettable place, introducing a powerful new voice in fiction
The Shore: a group of small islands in the Chesapeake Bay, just off the coast of Virginia. The Shore is clumps of evergreens, wild ponies, oyster-shell roads, tumble-down houses, unwanted pregnancies, murder, and dark magic in the marshes. Sanctuary to some but nightmare to others, it's a place that generations of families both wealthy and destitute have inhabited, fled, and returned to for hundreds of years. From a half-Shawnee Indian's bold choice to escape an abusive home only to find herself with a…
I am a child of the South, hailing as I do from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known for Roosevelt’s Little White House. My family, indeed the entire community as far as I can tell, were in the thrall of conservative Christian values that had no room for people like me—gay (although I had no word for it for a long time) and physically misshapen (something to be hidden under layers of clothing). I was a boy and then teenager living on the fringes, always on the outside looking in, seeking approval or defiantly hiding to process the uniquely Southern dysfunction around me. I know these protagonists. They’re my people.
The Cicada Tree is a wonderful Southern Gothic magical realism mash-up leavened with humor and illuminating reflections on the human condition told in voices that drip with authentic Southernisms. Analeise Newell, this novel’s protagonist, is a complex, not-as-kind-as-she-knows-she-should-be eleven-year-old who drinks whiskey and is a piano prodigy. Her close friendship with Etta Mae, a budding coloratura soprano, sheds light on accepted racial inequities in the Deep South of the 1950s, building to (in the author’s words) a “chain of cataclysmic events with life-altering consequences-all of it unfolding to the maddening whir of a cicada song.”
WHEN AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD, WHISKY DRINKING, PIANO PRODIGY ENCOUNTERS A WEALTHY FAMILY POSSESSING SUPERNATURAL BEAUTY, HER ENSUING OBSESSION UNLEASHES FAMILY SECRETS AND A CATACLYSMIC PLAGUE OF CICADAS. The summer of 1956, a brood of cicadas descends upon Providence, Georgia, a natural event with supernatural repercussions, unhinging the life of Analeise Newell, an eleven-year-old piano prodigy. Amidst this emergence, dark obsessions are stirred, uncanny gifts provoked, and secrets unearthed. During a visit to Mistletoe, a plantation owned by the wealthy Mayfield family, Analeise encounters Cordelia Mayfield and her daughter Marlissa, both of whom possess an otherworldly beauty, a lineal trait regarded as…
