Tag: halloween

A selection of fiction titles for your reading pleasure. Happy Halloween!

Cabot, Meg. Jinx. 2009. Sixteen-year-old Jean “Jinx” Honeychurch, the descendant of a witch, must leave Iowa to live with relatives in Manhattan after the first spell she casts goes awry, but she will have to improve her skills to stop her cousin from practicing black magic that endangers them and the boy they both like.

Coakley, Lena. Witchlanders. 2011. After the prediction of Ryder’s mother, once a great prophet and powerful witch, comes true and their village is destroyed by a deadly assassin, Ryder embarks on a quest that takes him into the mountains in search of the destroyer.

Duncan, Lois. Gallows Hill. 1997. Role playing takes on a terrifying cast when 17-year-old Sarah, who is posing as a fortune-teller for a school fair, begins to see actual visions.

Gray, Claudia. Spellcaster. 2013. Descended from witches, high school senior Nadia can tell as soon as her family moves to Captive’s Sound that the town is under a dark and powerful spell. Then she meets Mateo, the teenage local whose cursed dreams predict the future, and they must worktogether to prevent an impending disaster that threatens the entire town.

Green, Sally. Half Bad. 2014. In modern-day England, where witches live alongside humans, Nathan, son of a White witch and the most powerful Black witch, must escape captivity before his seventeenth birthday and receive the gifts that will determine his future.

Hearn, Julie. The Minister’s Daughter. 2005. In 1645 in England, the daughters of the town minister successfully accuse a local healer and her granddaughter of witchcraft to conceal an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but years later during the 1692 Salem trials their lie has unexpected repercussions.

Hemphill, Stephanie. Wicked Girls: a novel of the Salem Witch Trials. 2010. Wicked Girls is a fictionalized account of the Salem witch trials told from the perspective of three of the real young women living in Salem in 1692. Ann Putnam Jr. plays the queen bee. When her father suggests that a spate of illnesses within the village is the result of witchcraft, Ann grasps her opportunity. She puts in motion a chain of events that will change the lives of the people around her forever.

Horowitz, Anthony. Raven’s Gate. 2005. Sent to live in a foster home in a remote Yorkshire village, Matt, a troubled fourteen-year-old English boy, uncovers an evil plot involving witchcraft and the site of an ancient stone circle.

Kontis, Alethea. Hero. 2013. Saturday Woodcutter accidentally conjures an ocean in the backyard and, with sword in tow, sets sail on a pirate ship, only to find herself kidnapped and held captive by a mountain witch with the power to destroy the world.

Lamb, Victoria. Witchstruck. 2013. Meg Lytton has always known she is different — that she bears a dark and powerful gift. But in 1554 England, in service at Woodstock Palace to the banished Tudor princess Elizabeth, it has never been more dangerous to practise witchcraft. Meg knows she must guard her secret carefully from the many suspicious eyes watching over the princess and her companions. One wrong move could mean her life, and the life of Elizabeth, rightful heir to the English throne. With witchfinder Marcus Dent determined to have Meg’s hand in marriage, and Meg’s own family conspiring against the English queen, there isn’t a single person Meg can trust.

MacCullough, Carolyn. Once a Witch. 2011. Born into a family of witches, seventeen-year-old Tamsin is raised believing that she alone lacks a magical “Talent,” but when her beautiful and powerful sister is taken by an age-old rival of the family in an attempt to change the balance of power, Tamsin discovers her true destiny.

Powell, Laura. Burn Mark. 2012. In an alternate London, England, the lives of a fifteen-year-old girl eagerly awaiting the development of her “fae,” or witch abilities, and the son of a man who sentences witches to death by burning, intersect when the son makes a startling discovery.

Pratchett, Terry. The Wee Free Men: the Beginning. 2011. Young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching teams up with the Wee Free Men, a clan of six-inch-high blue men, to rescue her baby brother and ward off a sinister invasion from Fairyland.

Rees, Celia. Witch Child. 2000. In 1659, 14 year old Mary Newbury keeps a journal of her voyage from England to the New World and her experiences living as a witch in a community of Puritans near Salem, Massachusetts.

Rinaldi, Ann. A Break with Charity: a story about the Salem Witch Trials. 1992. While waiting for a church meeting in 1706, Susanna English, daughter of a wealthy Salem merchant, recalls the malice, fear, and accusations of witchcraft that tore her village apart in 1692.

Schwab, Victoria. The Near Witch. 2011. 16 year old Lexi, who lives on an enchanted moor at the edge of the village of Near, must solve the mystery when, the day after a mysterious boy appears in town, children start disappearing.

Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron. 2012. Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Diana Peterfreund, and Garth Nix are just a few of the authors who have toiled over their cauldrons and conjured up bewitching new creations inspired by and celebrating the might and mystery of the witch.