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Showing posts with label witches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label witches. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Book List of Witches, Magic, and Superstitions


Welcome.
I am finally getting into the Fall season. I wasn't quite ready to welcome all the changes last week.
I was clinging to the last bits of summer. Trying to wrap up all the tasks I was working on. Which included cleaning up my Goodreads account. I had a few books I wanted to put into new categories and ended up making a new "shelf".
I realized I had a few that really didn't fit anywhere, except plain old fiction or my "read" books.
I decided to add a "witches" category/shelf.
I thought, now is the perfect time to share that list here with all of you.
I'm not into gore or horror so much, but I am intrigued by old time witchcraft. As in healers and using mother nature instead of modern day, first world medicines. I also love anything about superstitions, rituals, old wives tales. The sort that make you question what could be. What you've heard or been taught. Maybe even a little chill up your spine. 
Those things, to me are what make a book more of storytelling. A good old fashioned..."Grandma used to say..." kind of story.
If those are the types of books you enjoy or are looking for, then you will love this list!


*post contains affiliate links




Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses both the power to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies- of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss-that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.

The New York Times best selling author of the Girl Who Chased The Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town's famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.


The women of the Waverley family--whether they like it or not--are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them.


In this irresistible novel, Sarah Addison Allen, author of the New York Times bestselling debut, Garden Spells, tells the tale of a young woman whose family secrets- and secret passions-are about to change her life forever.

Sixteen-year-old Kit Tyler is marked by suspicion and disapproval from the moment she arrives on the unfamiliar shores colonial Connecticut in 1687. Alone and desperate, she has been forced to leave her beloved home on the island of Barbados and join a family she has never met. Torn between her quest for belonging and her desire to be true to herself, Kit struggles to survive in a hostile place.


From Nora Roberts comes a trilogy about the land we are drawn to, the family we learn to cherish, and the people we long to love... With indifferent parents, Iona Sheehan grew up craving devotion and acceptance. From her maternal grandmother, she learned where to find both: a land of lush forests, dazzling lakes, and centuries-old legends. Ireland.

Also Books #2 and #3


Susanna desperately wants to join the circle of girls who meet every week at the parsonage. What she doesn't realize is that the girls are about to set off a torrent of false accusations leading to the imprisonment and execution of countless innocent people. Susanna faces a painful choice.

Fledgling witch Morgana must defend her love, her home, and her life in this enthralling tale perfect for fans of Discovery of Witches. In her small early nineteenth century Welsh town, there is no one quite like Morgana, who has not spoken since she was a young girl. Her silence is a mystery, as well as her magic.


I hope you all will enjoy these books as much as I did. You can also check out my shelf and any reviews I have done on them.
Happy reading and Happy Fall!





Friday, June 15, 2018

Book Review: Daughters of the Witching Hill


Daughters of the Witching Hill
By Mary Sharratt

Quote: "No, indeed. No one will let you. They'll come banging on your door at all hours, calling on you for this and that. Just be careful, love. It's a gift you've been given, but even gifts don't come for nothing. You might have to pay more than you bargained." ~Anne Whittle(Chattox) pg. 43

Started: May 17, 2018
Finished: May 24, 2018

paperback/333pages

From the Cover:

In Daughters of the Witching Hill, Mary Sharratt brings history to life in a vivid and wrenching novel of strong women, family, and betrayel inspired by the 1612 Pendle witch trials.
  Bess southerns, an impoverished widow, lives with her children in a crumbling old tower in Pendle Forest. Drawing on Catholic ritual, medicinal herbs, and guidance from her spirit-friend Tibb, Bess heals the sick and foretells the future in exchange for food and drink. As she ages, she instructs her best friend, Anne, and her granddaughter, Alizon, in her craft. Though Anne ultimately turns to dark magic, Alizon intends to use her craft for good. But when a peddler suffers a stroke after exchanging harsh words with Alizon, a local magistrate tricks her into accusing her family and neighbors of witchcraft. Suspicion and paranoia reach frenzied heights as friends and loved ones turn on one another and the novel draws to an inevitable conclusion.

My Review:

There is so much I want to say about this book!
This story is listed as a historical fiction but it is based off the actual lives, events and trials of  the Lancashire/Pendle Forest witches of 1612.

I honestly had not heard anything about the hunts or trials in England to this extent. 
While most of us, including myself, are very aware of the Salem witch trials, this was definitely an intriguing new find for myself.

Bess Southerns, known as Old Demdike was known to be a widowed cunning woman. A healer, who earned her living healing and blessing animals and people. After King James I took the throne, many people began to fear woman like Demdike.
They were not only becoming informed that these such people were "working for the devil" but it was also put into law that if any participated in "witchcraft" or knew of anyone doing so and did not come forward would also be punished.
Fear, belief, ignorance, being misinformed, and most likely poverty all started a  chaotic panic in the beginnings of a Witch Hunt.
Everyone became suspicious of each other. Friend, neighbor, even families.
It became a very real game of either being found guilty yourself, or give a name of someone else suspected of witchcraft to save yourself.

That is exactly what happens in Daughters of the Witching Hill.

 Bess teaches her long time friend, Anne(Chattox) her craft with the understanding and trust that Anne will not only keep this to herself but also, that she only intends to use it as protection and for good not evil or revenge.
That doesn't last long. For Anne has plans of her own that aren't exactly "Christian like".

Bess has also taught her granddaughter, Alizon. Bess's daughter had no interest in becoming a cunning woman and her husband(John Devise) is the poster picture for those paranoid and afraid of the craft.
John constantly thinks Chattox has cursed him, is cursing him, or is planning on cursing him.

This story is full of daily struggles, day to day lives. Families, friends, foes.
There is love, hurt, healing, poverty, suffering, perseverance, and prayer.
There are herbs, clay figures, and buried cat skulls too.
While this book is fiction, it is written in a  wonderful way to get you into the minds of how they lived, what they would have felt and done. I love that it shows how the times were and the way people reacted to what was going on around them.
I definitely would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Witch trials, history, or England.
Again, while it is a fiction it was extremely educational and informative.
5 STARS!

Here are a few links I have gathered to pique your interest!







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