Witching Hour — 5 Books About Witches
Witches have been around as long as women have been around. At times, they have been cursed, at times, praised. Depending on the time, it is always about power though, and how to use it among the rest of the human population.
Even if they are after you we are still fascinated by witches, the power within seemingly normal people. And perhaps that is one of the things we are drawn to. Because if people posses this great power within, why not you as well?.
This is a reading list of some of the books containing witches that we love.
Witch Child
By Celia Rees (2009)
This book was one of the books that got this writer into books about witches. More than an adventure of the witch myth and legend it is an exploration about the consequences of it. It is also dealing with a lot of issues just from one story, with women, religion and Native Americans. I also loved the next book, Sorceress
Synopsis: Welcome to the world of young Mary Newbury, a world where simply being different can cost a person her life. Hidden until now in the pages of her diary, Mary’s startling story begins in 1659, the year her beloved grandmother is hanged in the public square as a witch. Mary narrowly escapes a similar fate, only to face intolerance and new danger among the Puritans in the New World. How long can she hide her true identity? Will she ever find a place where her healing powers will not be feared?
Read it here
The Bear and the Nightingale
By Katherine Arden
This first book of the Winternight Trilogy, was recommended to me by my creative writing lecturer. And, yes, thank you for that. This is sort of fantasy that is rare and witches that claimed their way to the throne so fast.
Synopsis: Beware the evil in the woods. . . In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, an elderly servant tells stories of sorcery, folklore and the Winter King to the children of the family, tales of old magic frowned upon by the church. But for the young, wild Vasya these are far more than just stories. She alone can see the house spirits that guard her home, and sense the growing forces of dark magic in the woods. . .
Read it here
The Witching Hour
By Ann Rice
She changed the world’s view on vampires, and she didn’t shy away from writing about the witches either. In the series Lives of the Mayfair witches. It centers on a family of witches whose fortunes have been guided for generations by a spirit named Lasher. The series began in 1990 with The Witching Hour, which was followed by the sequels Lasher (1993) and Taltos (1994). All three novels debuted at №2 on The New York Times Best Seller list. Cool fun fact: Even some of her character cross over to the Vampire universe of hers.
Synopsis: It begins in our time with a rescue at sea. 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.
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, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today’s New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV. An intricate tale of evil unfolds-an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first “witch,” Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher… a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.
Read it here
The House of the Seven Gables
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
A classic one. it more suggest and hint at the supernatural to highlight the drama that enfolds, but nonetheless creates the same atmosphere many horror and supernatural writers strive all their life for.
Synopsis: This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man’s curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America’s limitless promise. Yet — in part because of blemishes on his own family history — he also saw the darker side of the young nation. Like his twentieth-century heirs William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hawthorne peered behind propriety’s facade and exposed the true human condition.
Read it here
Witch of Portobello
By Paulo Coelho
A Paulo Coelho book is always filled with heart, thoughts and love. But do be careful of reading his work. There is always a danger of becoming “deep”.
Synopsis: How do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves-even if we are unsure of who we are?That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho’s profound new work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well-or hardly at all. Like The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy, and sacrifice.
Read it here
Originally published at https://moonmausoleum.com on October 5, 2020.
