13 Books Like A Discovery of Witches

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If you’ve ever closed the final page of Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches and just sat there, a little stunned and a whole lot bereft, this list is for you.

There’s a very specific ache that comes after finishing a book that has genuinely transported you. Harkness built something rare with her All Souls trilogy: a world where the Bodleian Library feels like sacred ground, where a vampire can quote 16th-century poetry without it being corny, and where the slow unraveling of a supernatural mystery feels as intellectually satisfying as cracking open a real historical archive. That combination of scholarly rigor, slow-burn romance, and layered supernatural world-building is genuinely hard to replicate.

But here’s what I know after years of living inside fiction for a living: if you dig deep enough, you find the books that come close. Some of them come very close. Let me walk you through the ones worth your time.

Why A Discovery of Witches Hit So Hard

Before we dive in, it helps to understand exactly what made the original tick. The novel debuted at number two on the New York Times Best Seller list in Hardcover Fiction, and was already in its seventh printing just two months after its February 2011 publication. That’s not a fluke. That’s a book landing with readers at the precise right moment, meeting a hunger they didn’t even know they had.

It has since been translated into more than 36 languages (later updated to 38), and the television adaptation that followed further cemented its cultural staying power. On Goodreads, A Discovery of Witches has accumulated over 558,000 ratings with an average of 4.02 stars, a number that reflects something interesting: this is not a universally adored book. Some readers found it slow. Some found the romance too consuming. But the ones who fell for it? They fell hard.

Harkness herself described the novel as a “thought experiment” that grew from noticing the flood of supernatural fiction at an airport bookshop, and wondering what that fascination really meant about readers today. Her answer, filtered through years of academic work as a historian of science, was this: we still want magic to be possible. We want the world to hold more than what we can measure.

That’s the emotional core. Keep that in mind as you read through this list, because every book here taps into that same well.

The Books Worth Your Time

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

This one comes up in nearly every conversation about A Discovery of Witches, and for good reason. The Night Circus is a mesmerizing tale of a magical competition between two young illusionists set against the backdrop of a mysterious circus that only appears at night, with rich atmospheric writing and an intricate plot.

What the comparisons sometimes miss, though, is how strange this book really is. The romance here is almost achingly restrained, more feeling than action, and Morgenstern’s circus is less a setting than a living presence. If A Discovery of Witches gave you that sense of wonder at the world hiding just beneath the surface of the ordinary, The Night Circus will do the same thing, from a completely different angle.

I’d especially recommend this one if you’re someone who reads for atmosphere first and plot second.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Harkness has said she’s a huge fan of Diana Gabaldon and sees comparisons between the two as flattering. That endorsement means something. Outlander is a massive, unruly, time-travel historical romance that has been absorbing readers since 1991 and shows no signs of letting them go.

On Goodreads, Outlander carries an average rating of 4.26 across more than 1.1 million ratings, which tells you everything about its staying power. Like A Discovery of Witches, it drops you into unfamiliar historical terrain and asks you to fall in love with both a place and a man. The Scottish Highlands of the 1740s are rendered with the same specificity and love that Harkness brings to Elizabethan England.

Fair warning: Gabaldon writes long. Outlander is well over 800 pages. But readers who commit tend to emerge six books later, blinking in the sunlight, wondering where the last three months went.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

This one is criminally underread. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane follows Connie Goodwin, a Harvard graduate student who discovers a mysterious name written on a piece of paper tucked inside an antique Bible while clearing out her grandmother’s house in Salem. What follows is part academic mystery, part witch history, and entirely gripping.

Howe’s meticulous research and engaging narrative make this book a must-read for fans of witchcraft and the Salem witch trials, and the mix of romance, humor, and history gives it an immersive quality that fans of A Discovery of Witches will recognize.

What I find genuinely striking about this novel is how Howe uses her own academic background (she’s a descendant of two women tried during the Salem witch trials) to ground the supernatural elements in something that feels historically plausible rather than invented. That’s exactly the move Harkness makes, and it works just as well here.

Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe is the book I recommend when someone tells me they loved A Discovery of Witches but wished the female protagonist had more agency from the start. Miller’s Circe is a woman who has to earn her power, who discovers it slowly, who pays for it. The novel spans centuries and Greek mythology with a confidence that never tips into pedantry.

Readers who love the witchy vibes of A Discovery of Witches find Circe lyrical, powerful, and utterly immersive, and I’d add that it’s also one of the most quietly feminist novels I’ve read in years. Miller doesn’t make a big deal about it. She just writes a woman who refuses to be diminished, and that refusal hums on every page.

This is also, incidentally, a book that holds up to rereading. The second time through, you notice everything you missed.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Think of this as A Discovery of Witches for readers who want more gothic menace and less romance. Kostova’s debut novel follows a young woman who discovers a mysterious, centuries-old book in her father’s library, along with a cache of letters that pull her into a decades-long hunt for Dracula’s tomb.

The Historian is praised for its beautiful writing, well-researched historical details, and suspenseful plot, and Kostova’s ability to create an engaging and immersive narrative ensures it is a compelling read from start to finish.

What I find most remarkable about The Historian is its patience. Kostova spent ten years writing this book, and you feel every one of those years in the texture of the prose. Like Harkness, she understands that the best supernatural fiction is built on a foundation of genuinely good historical scholarship.

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

If you loved the vampire lore of A Discovery of Witches and want to wade deeper into it, The Witching Hour is where you go. This is Rice operating at full power, building a multigenerational family saga around the Mayfairs, a dynasty of witches with a spectral attachment they cannot shake.

What makes this book stand out is how Rice takes her time building the world and the family’s background with detail, tracing their wealth, power, and the strange things that have followed them for generations. It reads more like a family saga than a fast-paced horror story, which might not be for everyone. But if you like stories that feel layered and slow to reveal secrets, it delivers.

Be honest with yourself before you pick this up: it’s over 1,000 pages, and Rice means every one of them. This is not a book for readers who need momentum every fifty pages. But for readers who like to live inside a world for a good long while, it is nearly unmatched.

Weyward by Emilia Hart

This is the book I’ve been pressing into people’s hands for the past couple of years. Weyward follows three women across four centuries, each connected by blood, by magic, and by the particular danger that powerful women face from the world around them.

Weyward won two Goodreads Choice Awards (Best Debut and Best Historical Fiction) and is considered one of the best witch books in recent years. The adult fantasy book follows three Weyward women: in 2017, Kate is fleeing an abusive partner; in 1619, Altha is awaiting her own witch trial; and in 1942, Violet’s father keeps her trapped because she cannot fit into what society expects of her.

Hart is doing something genuinely ambitious here, braiding three timelines together in a way that never feels mechanical or contrived. The connection between the women is revealed slowly and satisfyingly, and the magic in this book feels rooted in the natural world in a way that’s more ecological than supernatural. It’s the kind of book that makes you look at a field of wildflowers differently.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

Practical Magic has been around since 1995, and it still earns every reader it finds. The Owens sisters, Sally and Gillian, are witches who can’t escape the family curse, and the novel follows their attempts to live ordinary lives in a town that has feared their family for generations.

Hoffman’s lyrical prose and vivid imagery create an immersive reading experience that will delight fans of A Discovery of Witches, and it is a heartwarming and magical tale that stays with readers long after they turn the last page.

What I love about this book is its understanding that magic and grief are not so different from each other. Both change you. Both leave marks. Hoffman doesn’t write fantasy so much as she writes about the way extraordinary things happen inside ordinary lives, which is also, at its core, what Harkness was doing.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni is set in 1899 New York, and it follows two mythological beings from radically different traditions: a Jewish golem named Chava and an Arab jinni named Ahmad, both stranded in a strange new world, both trying to understand what they are.

The research into immigrant communities in 1899 New York adds compelling layers to the narrative, and the friendship and eventual romance between the two characters is as compelling as Matthew and Diana’s.

This is the rare novel that takes its mythology completely seriously without ever feeling like homework. Wecker did an enormous amount of research, and it shows in the texture of every scene. The book is also one of the most quietly moving explorations of loneliness I’ve encountered in genre fiction, which is not what you expect from a story about a golem and a jinni, but there it is.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

Not every book on this list needs to be a thousand pages of darkness and history. Sometimes you want something warm. The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is precisely that: a cozy, romantic, deeply satisfying novel about a witch named Mika who tutors three young witches and stumbles into something she didn’t know she needed.

The found family dynamics in this novel are heartwarming, and it offers something lighter but still packed with magic for readers who want the witchy vibes without the gothic weight.

I’ll be direct: if you’re a reader who burned out on dark fantasy and just wants a book that will make you feel good, this is it. Mandanna writes with a warmth that is completely unforced. The romance develops slowly and believably, and the three children at the center of the story are written with a specificity and care that makes them feel absolutely real.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Morgenstern’s second novel arrived nearly a decade after The Night Circus, and it is a more ambitious, more peculiar, and more divisive book. The Starless Sea follows Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a graduate student who discovers a mysterious book in his university library that contains a story about his own childhood. His search for answers leads him to an underground world of libraries, pirates, bees, and time that doesn’t behave the way it should.

The Starless Sea is perfect for fans of lyrical prose and hidden magical worlds. It is a love letter to storytelling, with pirates, keys, and doors that lead to deeper mysteries, and the romance is subtle but deeply felt.

Here’s my honest assessment: this book is not for everyone. If you need a plot that resolves cleanly, look elsewhere. But if the idea of a novel that reads like a dream you keep almost understanding sounds appealing to you, The Starless Sea is one of the most singular reading experiences of the last decade.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is set in 1901 and follows January Scaller, a young woman who discovers a book that tells the story of other worlds connected to our own through mysterious doors.

Harrow’s lyrical prose and imaginative storytelling offer a fresh take on magic, intertwining it with themes of sisterhood and empowerment, and the novel’s dark academia ambiance and richly developed world will resonate with fans of A Discovery of Witches.

What Harrow understands, and what Harkness also understood, is that the most compelling fantasy is always about something real. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is about colonialism, about belonging, about what it means to be someone who doesn’t fit the world they’ve been handed. The magical framework is beautiful. The emotional core is devastating. That combination is exactly what the best supernatural fiction does.

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

For readers who want that same sense of a richly constructed, rule-governed supernatural world, Shannon’s The Bone Season is essential. Set in a dystopian future London where clairvoyants are hunted by a tyrannical regime, it follows Paige Mahoney, a dreamwalker who gets pulled into a world far darker than the criminal underground she calls home.

The Bone Season is a captivating blend of dystopian and fantasy elements, set in a richly imagined future where clairvoyants are hunted, and it offers a thrilling read for fans of complex world-building and slow-burn romances.

Shannon has built a vocabulary and taxonomy for her supernatural world that rivals what Harkness did with her creature hierarchies. This is the rare fantasy series where the world-building itself becomes addictive, where you find yourself wanting to understand the rules more than you want to know what happens next.

The Thread That Connects Them All

Look back at this list and you’ll notice something. Every book here takes its world seriously. None of them treat the supernatural as decoration. The magic in these novels has weight, has consequence, has history. The romance, where it exists, develops slowly because the characters are complicated enough to require it.

That’s what A Discovery of Witches taught readers to want, and that’s what the best books in this genre continue to deliver. The world is full of books that borrow the surface elements without the substance. This list isn’t that. Every title here earns its place.

Whatever you read next, read it slowly. The best books don’t deserve to be rushed.

5/5 - (1 vote)