There’s something about fall that makes me want to read nothing but new witch books, and this season is delivering. I went through the new releases and pulled together the ones I’m genuinely counting down to — a real mix, too. Some are the cozy, swoony, curl-up-with-a-blanket kind of witchy reads, like The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium. Others lean eerie, like Crone, the horror and thriller picks for when you want to be unsettled instead of comforted. Whether you’re in the mood to fall in love or sleep with the lights on, there’s something here for you.
Devour Me by Emily Rath (Aug 4)
This is exactly my kind of trouble: a witch who’s had enough, a wraith who’s too charming for his own good, and a human who wants none of this get tangled together on a New England island after the human does the impossible — stops the wraith mid-soul-devour with one word. I’m a why-choose MMF girl through and through, and this trio has me excited for fall.
Bound by Fury by Noelle Monét (Aug 18)
An elite boarding school in the Appalachian Mountains, a family connection nobody bothered to explain, and a power that wakes up the same day Harper’s grandmother dies — this one throws you straight into the deep end. Turns out her grandmother’s old stories about girls born with starlight in their blood weren’t just stories. The second I read the synopsis, this gave me Legendborn Cycle vibes — and I loved that series, so I’m already sold.
The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium by Lexie Sharabianlou (Aug 18)
This one has cozy fall written all over it. A fledgling sorceress runs the worst-reviewed coffee shop in town on purpose — bad coffee keeps the humans out, since the café’s real job is hiding magical beings on the run. Then a human local starts showing up daily for cocoa, dimples and all, and our barista has to guard her magic and her feelings at the same time while hunters start closing in. It’s giving me spooky Gilmore Girls energy, and honestly that’s exactly the vibe I want going into fall.
A Taste of Magic by Tricia O’Malley (Aug 25)
I loved Love’s a Witch, so I’m thrilled O’Malley is back in Briarhaven for book two. This time a witch’s spellwork goes haywire every time she’s attracted to someone — which is a serious problem when she gets paired with her high school ex on a reality baking show. It looks like the exact kind of super cute witch romance I want on my fall TBR.
The Devil Knows Her Name by C.N. Vair (Aug 25)
I’ve been craving a genuinely spooky, witchy horror novel, and this debut might be it. A hundred years ago, Tess made a bargain with the devil to survive an attack — now she’s ageless, running a wildlife sanctuary on the land she nearly died on, and every autumn the devil comes back offering her more power for a price she keeps refusing. When a new pastor rolls into town and starts turning everyone against her, that bargain starts looking a lot more tempting. I’m ready to be unsettled.
The Witches of Cambridge by Alice Hoffman (Sep 8)
Practical Magic is one of my all-time favorites, so a brand-new witch series from Alice Hoffman has me thrilled before I’ve even read a page. Two Radcliffe students in 1950s Cambridge get pulled into a secret society called the Lilith Society, and as McCarthyism tightens its grip on the city, girls from the group start disappearing. This is going straight to the top of my fall list.
Crone by Keith Rosson (Sep 22)
Something’s lurking in the woods, and nobody in this book will say the word “witch” out loud — which is somehow scarier than if they did. Eli’s an ex-detective, ex-addict, and grieving father who’s spent a decade unraveling over his daughter’s disappearance, now working off a debt to a drug gang by solving a murder that doesn’t add up. It’s giving me real Blair Witch Project energy — less “witchy fall read,” more “sleep with the lights on.” I’m here for it.
The Sisters of Crimson House by Melissa Anderson Sweazy (Sep 29)
Super intrigued by this one — it’s giving me Practical Magic vibes, and I’m always down for a haunted house premise. Charley is the only woman in a long line of famous psychics who never inherited the family gift, so she’s been faking it, running the family’s haunted Memphis mansion as a tourist trap of staged readings and cons. Then a skeptic starts exposing her as a fraud, her estranged sister comes back after years away, and something real starts waking up in the house. This feels like the perfect book to read this fall.
The Witch by Freida McFadden (Oct 6)
McFadden trades domestic suspense for a full-on witchy thriller, and I’m so ready. Julia moves into her family’s 17th-century Massachusetts estate after losing her job and her apartment — and it isn’t long before things start going bump in the night. Digging into the house’s history, she uncovers a woman executed for witchcraft there in 1692, and realizes the past isn’t nearly as buried as her family wants her to believe. Old house, old secrets, new scares — I can’t wait.
The Forest Bleeds by Rachel Kitch (Oct 13)
This one is giving me full Atlas Six energy, except swap the secret library for a remote mansion in the Appalachian Mountains. A busload of witch doctoral students gets rerouted there, and the owner’s demand is refreshingly simple: heal his rotting leg or die. Dark academia meets blood magic meets STEM, wrapped in that trapped-in-the-mountains dread I can’t resist. I’m already obsessed.
The Haunting of Lavender House by Natalie Kikic (Oct 20)
Petra just found out her dead grandmother isn’t actually dead — and that’s only the first secret waiting for her at the family’s lavender-covered estate on a Croatian island. Flip back to 1895, and a healer named Magdalena is being branded a witch by the same town she keeps saving, all while falling for exactly the wrong man. Both timelines are haunted by a mora, a blood-thirsty spirit pulled straight from real Croatian folklore — and I love a witch book that digs into mythology I haven’t seen done before.
Birth of the Witch by Nora Roberts (Nov 17)
Niamh McShane was thirteen when the Salem panic killed her — and in her final hours, the women imprisoned beside her passed their power into her instead of letting it die too. Three hundred years later, on that same island, Neve McShane turns thirteen and unwraps sneakers, an iPhone, and the revelation that her aunts are witches — and so is she. Nora Roberts opening a new trilogy with a death scene instead of a meet-cute tells me exactly how seriously this one’s going to take its own stakes, and I’m strapped in for all three books already.