Time for Good Shit vs Shit To Avoid, where we build a recommendation list based on reader inquiry. This email comes from Jill:
As Autumn weather and Halloween approach, I find myself craving romantic reading with similar setting. Does the all-powerful Bitchery have any suggestions? Books featuring magic and AutumnHalloween would be greatly appreciated. Paranormal stories featuring ghosts are welcome as welll…. If there's anyone I can turn to to find good romantic reading of any sort, it's you intrepid ladies.
Ghost stories would be great, as well as stories involving Witches and Magic in general. Every October I work my way through the works of Sarah Addison Allen and while it's not 'bibbidi bobbidi boo!' style magic, it has an inherent magical quality to the daily lives of the characters. Along similar lines (more traditional magic) is Annette Blair's The Scot, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Patricia Coughlin's Wedding Magic (haunted house). I'd love input from the Bitchery on all of these genres to sustain me through autumn and Halloween.
There are a TON of books featuring magic, autumn, Halloween, and while they're paranormal, they're not always quite the same as paranormal featuring weres, vampires, or other creatures. I think one of the first romances I read with magical witchery heroines was the Nora Roberts category series about the Donovans, starting with Captivated ( A | BN | K | S | iB). I read the three books in that series in a day or so, I was so in love with those characters.
There are many romances that feature ghosts, magic or witches, either as ancillary characters, plot devices (especially as part of ghostus-ex-machina endings), and possibly heroines, but I'm curious which you'd recommend. Which books should be on Jill's list?
I suggest The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R. A. Dick. It’s an older book on which at least one movie and a TV show were based. Definitely romantic, but whether it’s technically a romance depends on how the reader feels about the ending. I say yes, but that’s just me. It’s not the easiest book to find, but your library may be able to get it through ILL.
Also, another vote for Barbara Michaels. The Dark on the Other Side creeped me out so badly, I was only able to read it once.
My favorite ghost romance is Freudian Slip by Erica Orloff. I picked it up thinking it would be your usual trope, but it was anything but that. What a fabulous story!
Definitely second the Ilona Andrews suggestion. Both her series are fantastic.
I also really love the Kim Harrison series “Dead Witch Walking’- Witches, ghosts, demons, elves etc.
There’s also a great Elizabeth Peters book, Devil-may-care, in which she basically spoofs her Barbara Michaels persona. And there’s an oddball romance by A. Lee Martinez called A Nameless Witch, which features a romance between an undead cannibalistic witch (with a demonic pet duck!) and a White Knight who’s sworn to celibacy. Martinez has written some very strange and strangely sweet fantasies cum romances—there’s also Gil’s All Fright Diner, in which a vampire named Earl falls in love with a ghost, and, together with his werewolf buddy (named Duke) saves the world from a Lovecraftian apocalypse orchestrated by a disgruntled teenage girl with armed with a magic 8-ball.
No one has mentioned Christopher Moore yet. How about ‘Bloodsucking Fiends’, ‘You Suck’, and ‘Bite Me’. I also happen to love his ‘A Dirty Job’. They are all satire/humor but include romance.
Teresa Medeiros has a pair of oldies featuring time-travelling witches, swoon-worthy heros, and more than a little humor with BREATH OF MAGIC and its sequel TOUCH OF ENCHANTMENT.
I second Anna Dressed In Blood. (I also agree that I don’t think it’s categorized correctly. In our library system we got rid of YA and put things as Older Teen and Younger Teen. We have it as YT for some reason and I think it should be OT.)
A book series I really like, also Older Teen, Generation Dead. Teens who die come back as zombies for no reason they can understand. They just try to carry on their lives. They don’t need to eat or anything. Don’t heal from injuries. Face a lot of bigotry and hatred. Not so much horror as social commentary.
It seems when it comes to paranormal I have a preference for either classics like Dracula or the kids & teen stuff. I guess because they don’t try to heavily sex it up like the adult stuff. Sex is fine, but sometimes with paranormals they put too much sex and not enough spooky.
Oh! A younger teen book – The Reformed Vampire Support Group. Told from the POV of a vampire who was turned when she was a teenager in the 1970s. She’s trying to not drink blood, hangs with other vampires who do the same, and find themselves trying to rescue a young werewolf who’s being used in illegal dog fights. All set in Australia.
I’m trying to remember this other series for young kids, about the same age group that would read Cam Jansen, maybe on the edge of reading Nancy Drew. Yet I still enjoyed them. I just can’t remember the name of them! Anyway, it’s about an elementary school girl who can see and speak to ghosts. So can her mom who makes a living at it. Everyone at school makes fun of her except for this boy she has a crush on and her best friend who plays the cello. They’re really quick reads because they were, of course, written for young kids, but I still liked them. Though sometimes I want to smack her for refusing to go to her mom for help. But kids, what can you expect?
Loved the series by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer that begins with Sorcery and Ceclia. It’s very much Harry Potter by way of Jane Austen. Not really Romance, I’d call them YA adventure with strong romantic plots.
Loved Mary Jo Putney – The Marriage Spell.
Leanna Renee Hieber’s Strangely Beautiful books are nice and spooky, but I don’t think they are available just now due to the Dorchester mess. And I do love La Nora’s ghosts in the In the Garden and Chesapeake Bay series.
Someone else mentioned Barbara Hambly; her re-released Bride of the Rat God (set in early Hollywood) has curses and demons and lots of cool supernatural elements.
Susanna Kearsley’s Rose Garden has time travel magic that’s excellent, and The Winter Sea has a great past lives plot. Highly recommended!
I loved reading Porter House by JJ Martin. Ghosts can be very sexy. 😉
Debora Geary…. Her Witch Central characters rock my world! http://www.deborageary.com/