Book Haul on a Budget: 8 Witchy Books for All Hallow’s Eve
All Hallows’ Eve and all things related, such as witches, ghouls, and goblins, have long been tainted as wicked, evil, and monstrous. However, if you look closely, you begin to notice that monsters are rarely mere fantasy. This book haul on a budget is in honor of the Witch, an oft-maligned figure relegated to the role of a nasty hag, rather than the learned, spiritual women they actually are.
During this time of year, the Witch holds a special place in my heart. Sadly, history demonstrates the vilification, mortification, incarceration, and demonization of learned women for daring to, well…do anything. To be themselves: intelligent, enterprising, curious, leaders and healers.
For millennia and up through modern times, these women—deep thinkers and philosophers—have been persecuted for knowing too much and for daring to exhibit such knowledge at all.
Stories about witches are allegories—stand-ins for the darker truths we humans endure in reality. Witches condemned at the stake echo society’s fear of women with power.
If I’d been born hundreds of years ago, my tenacity for scholarly pursuits might’ve caused my imprisonment or death. Thankfully, I was born in 1971, surrounded by many women, healers, thinkers, and sages in their own way.
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Modern Healers
My grandmother, Ina, and her two sisters, Louisa and Aurea, were such learned ladies. I call them my Brooklyn Brujas (pronounced broo-hahs, Spanish for witch).
These three feisty sisters weren’t actually witches. They simply believed in themselves and their own abilities. Their strength of character allowed them to accomplish miracles, however humble, from the 1940s on.
They were phenomenal teachers.
Within their safe havens, I learned about honor, strength, and reverence. They taught me that self-esteem comes from within; they taught me about courage and fortitude, humility, and pride, and more importantly, the balance between the two.
From my grandmother, I learned indigenous ways of healing, where herbs, spices, and time-honored remedies tend to the body, mind, and spirit.
Though these women have passed, I carry their loving guidance with me always. And so I dedicate this All Hallows’ Eve Witches book haul to them.
Autumn is also the perfect time of year to indulge in one or two of the following books. Perhaps within their pages, these moving stories will stir your soul and awaken your intuition.
Book Haul:
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Before I continue, this is a Book Haul on a Budget, and that it was. I purchased 90% of these books at Goodwill or similar thrift stores for less than a dollar a piece, including the first edition (1990) hardcover of Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour!
The Witching Hour
by Anne Rice
Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life. He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him. As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, an intricate tale of evil unfolds…
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
by Katherine Howe
Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie’s grandmother’s abandoned home near Salem, she can’t refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge.
A Discovery of Witches
by Deborah Harkness
Deborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. 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…
The Witch’s Daughter
by Paula Brackston
An enthralling tale of modern witch Bess Hawksmith, a fiercely independent woman desperate to escape her cursed history who must confront the evil which has haunted her for centuries
My name is Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith, and my age is three hundred and eighty-four years. If you will listen, I will tell you a tale of witches. A tale of magic and love and loss. A story of how simple ignorance breeds fear, and how deadly that fear can be. Let me tell you what it means to be a witch…
Labyrinth Lost
by Zoraida Gordova
Alex is a bruja and the most powerful witch in her family. But she’s hated magic ever since it made her father disappear into thin air. So while most girls celebrate their Quinceañera, Alex prepares for her Deathday―the most important day in a bruja’s life and her only opportunity to rid herself of magic. But the curse she performs during the ceremony backfires, and her family vanishes, forcing Alex to absorb all of the magic from her family line. Left alone, Alex seeks help from Nova, a brujo with ambitions of his own…
The Witches of East End
by Melissa de la Cruz
The three Beauchamp women-Joanna and her daughters, Freya and Ingrid-live in North Hampton, out on the tip of Long Island. Their beautiful, mist-shrouded town seems almost stuck in time, and all three women lead seemingly quiet, uneventful existences. But they are harboring a mighty secret-they are powerful witches banned from using their magic. Joanna can resurrect people from the dead and heal the most serious of injuries. Ingrid, her bookish daughter, has the ability to predict the future and weave knots that can solve anything from infertility to infidelity. And finally, there’s Freya, the wild child, who has a charm or a potion that can cure most any heartache. For centuries, all three women have been forced to suppress their abilities. But then Freya, who is about to get married to the wealthy and mysterious Bran Gardiner, finds that her increasingly complicated romantic life makes it…
A Secret History of Witches
by Louisa Morgan
Brittany, 1821. After Grand-Mere Ursule gives her life to save her family, their magic seems to die with her. Even so, the Orchires fight to keep the old ways alive, practicing half-remembered spells and arcane rites in hopes of a revival. And when their youngest daughter comes of age, magic flows anew. The lineage continues, though new generations struggle not only to master their power but also to keep it hidden. But when World War II looms on the horizon, magic is needed more urgently than ever — not for simple potions or visions, but to change the entire course of history…
The Rose Labyrinth
by Titania Hardie
Before his death in 1609, Queen Elizabeth’s spiritual consultant, astrologer, and scientific advisor John Dee hid many of his most astonishing written works, believing that the world was not yet prepared to face the shocking truths that they revealed. For seventeen generations, his female descendants have carefully guarded the secret of his hiding place, waiting for the right moment to bring Dee’s ideas to light. That time is now. In The Rose Labyrinth, popular British author Titania Hardie masterfully blends historical fact and fiction as she introduces readers to Lucy King, a beautiful, young documentary producer based in London. With the help of a brilliant group of friends, Lucy races through London, France, and New York to decipher the clues that will eventually lead her to the hidden treasure of the Rose Labyrinth. Along the way, she finds true love with Alex Stafford, the doctor who…
As the list above shows, witches are never just villains or heroes—they are mirrors of our fears, our power, and our wonder. Their magic lives on in every tale we dare to read. I can’t wait to dive in, and I’d love to know which one you’d reach for first.
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Until next time,
Cynthia M. Hall
Writer • Editor • Creative Guide
Changing the World One Word at a Time
