Category: Featured Reads

Best news, book recommendations, literary magazines, and articles on magical realism, speculative genres, and memoir - 2023 and 2024.

Stack of books
The Best Speculative Fiction - 2025

Though most associate magic with fantasy books (i.e. dragons, spell-casting, witches, and vampires), magic can also be found in novels about the mundane, everyday world. This is the foundation for magical realism and speculative fiction. This post won't get into the technical or craft considerations for these two genres, but know that there are some. […]

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The Best Books About the Magic of Nature - Nonfiction Edition

If there was any silver lining to 2020’s lockdowns, it was the rediscovery of nature. There's something uniquely rejuvenating about being outside, feeling bare feet on grass, touching bark, tasting ocean spray. Whatever your preferred landscape, the books in this list will inspire and reinvigorate, intertwining drama and self-discovery with the howling call of the […]

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The Spell Lives On: 5 Memoirs About Witches and Magic

Over the years, many witches have told their tales of awakening in memoir form. While the backgrounds and settings of these narratives are all richly unique, what they share is a theme of reclaiming one's power by embarking on an underworld journey that ultimately releases them to eschew cultural pressures and tap into their own […]

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Witch Herbalism Book: Review of "Womb Witch"

Five hundred years ago, midwives were the leaders in reproductive health. Many of these healers were wise in the ways of plants and herbs, wombs and childbearing, and some were targeted as witches (Ehrenreich and English). Though these “witches” were the ones who understood bones, muscles, herbs, and drugs at a time when physicians “were […]

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The Best Fairytale Retellings for Adults - 2025

What makes a story a fairy tale retelling? Some faithfully recast characters that we know well in modern-day settings, like the characters in Helen Oyeyemi's Gingerbread, who live in present-day England and use toxic gingerbread to travel to a distant, mystical land. Other retellings are set in the past and use the fairy tale as […]

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Best Fairy Tale Books: A Review of Little, Big by John Crowley

At the start of this tale, one Smoky Barnable sets off to marry Daily Alice—but first, he has to find her. Edgewood is off the beaten path, much like Little, Big itself—no ordinary dwelling place. The upstate New York mansion has three hundred and sixty-five stairs, seven chimneys, fifty-two doors, twelve (“twelve what? There must […]

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The Best Mythology Books for Adults - 2024

Do you love epic stories about gods and goddesses, but want a contemporary twist to the telling? One glance at this lineup of modern mythological fiction, and you'll notice that most of them have a couple things in common: they're written by women, about women. Maybe that's because mythology needs a female-centric recasting, a feminine […]

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Ursula K. Le Guin’s Taoism: How “The Way” Inspired Some of Her Greatest Works of Fiction

The work of Ursula K. Le Guin resonates across time and cultures. From the rich traditions of the Hainish universe to the vast islands of Earthsea, Le Guin’s novels are some of the most detailed and transformative in the history of the genre. In her lifetime, Le Guin published nearly 50 novels, novellas, children’s books, […]

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  • Craft Corner

    Stack of books

    Some favorite reads for honing manuscripts, magic(k), and minds

  • Take your imagination on a date with these translated mini-essays about children and storytelling. The Grammar of Fantasy by Gianni Rodari will loosen writer's block and cultivate child-like wonder and playfulness (with a healthy side of potty humor).
  • The Wonder Book Jeff VanderMeer
    Wacky and wonderful, this inspiring craft (comic? cabinet of curiosities? I Spy?) book will not only give you helpful tips for writing fabulist fiction, it will also give your weary brain a needed break from it.
  • Stories need not follow the pyramidal rise-and-fall of Freytag's story arc to be compelling. Jane Alison's Meander, Spiral, Explode opens minds and manuscripts with its survey of shapes found in both nature and literature.
  • New witches and witch-curious readers will appreciate this mind-body approach to magick. Its authentic tone and easy-to-follow guide will appeal to those looking to cultivate a witchy meditation practice and to see their magickal efforts manifest in the real world.
  • Six Ways by Aidan Wachter is an easy-to-read primer on "chaos magic:" tips and how-to's for building a magickal toolbox that doesn't ascribe to any particular school of thought. The book covers sigils, petitions, animism, trance, and more. Its likable narrator and magickal content will inspire writers and magicians alike.
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