“It was the September equinox, the season when lives come full circle, when one journey ends, and another begins.”
Alice Hoffman is ushering in fall with an eerie parallel to this quote from her new novel. Circling back to her most beloved series, Practical Magic 2 (based on the 2021 novel, The Book of Magic) hits theaters on September 10th. Just two days prior, she is also launching an enchanting new book series, beginning with The Witches of Cambridge.
Ava Abbott and Lauren Bell couldn’t be more different, but they have one very important thing in common: They are both witches. Raised in small-town Maine, Ava has longed to break free from her isolated upbringing and is thrilled to begin her studies at Radcliffe College. Lauren, on the other hand, has lived her whole life in Cambridge and hails from a long line of Radcliffe alumnae.
The two are assigned as roommates, and subsequently invited to join the Lilith Society—a secret organisation established hundreds of years ago for women who were considered outsiders, witches just like them. After a brush with death on the eve of initiation, they become fast friends and the story unfolds from here.
Hoffman takes us on this collegiate journey with Ava and Lauren, dividing the book into four sections, one for each school year. Both young women travel their own unique path: Ava falls in love with exactly the wrong type of man, while Lauren’s past pushes her toward a darker type of magic. Yet their histories are unexpectedly intertwined and revealed through a series of interludes, letters written in the late 17th and early 18th century by the so-called “First Witch of Cambridge.”
The best books are often about more than just the plot or the characters. It’s the essence of the story, the feeling the author saturates the reader in, that really makes a book memorable. The Witches of Cambridge is one of these books, with an atmosphere that carries you through to a previously unimagined reality, a whole new witchy world to explore and love.
The premise was born from Hoffman’s time attending Harvard Divinity School and the rich history of the region, from late-17th century Salem to the more modern-day witch hunts of McCarthyism, is tightly woven throughout the story. This factual basis makes the novel that much more intriguing, with historical events readers will recognise. However, Hoffman also takes some interesting liberties, bending the true history and expanding upon it to fit her story. There’s one easter egg in particular— set in a Boston psychiatric hospital, exploring the conflation of the madness of women and witchcraft—that was a delight to stumble upon, so keep your eyes peeled!
In the end, The Witches of Cambridge is many things. This novel is not just another story about witches or a probing of history, it is a deeply sentimental and resonant journey. It is a coming-of-age story. Ava and Lauren learn who they are, not just as they’ve been labeled by those around them, but who they know themselves to be at the core.
It is also a story about love, and how true love can break all the rules we’ve set for ourselves. And it’s a bit of a love letter to readers and writers alike. Hoffman knows her audience well, leaving readers with no shortage of wonderfully memorable passages. I’ll leave you with one of my favorites here: “The world began with words, and so did magic. Speak and you shall create. Abra kadabra. If Ava wanted to know the truth, all she had to do was read.”
The Witches of Cambridge is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of September 8th 2026.
Will you be picking up The Witches of Cambridge? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis
The brand-new series from the bestselling author of Practical Magic, following two brilliant young women in 1950s Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they become immersed in a mysterious secret group of witches at Radcliffe known as the Lilith Society.
Once upon a time, women were drowned in the river and the only witnesses were the crows in the trees. The Puritans blamed Eve for the sins of the world. That was when we began to meet in the name of Lilith, Adam’s first wife—banished for refusing to do as she was told.
We Fly Together…
By the 1950s, Cambridge, Massachusetts feels far removed from the legendary witch trials that marked its early days as a colony. Ava, a bright young woman from a small town in Maine, arrives for her first year at Radcliffe College. There, she meets Lauren, her opposite in every way—the wild and brazen daughter of a wealthy and well-established Cambridge family. But the two have more in common than they think. Both are recruited by the Lilith Society, a secret organization of witches at Radcliffe dating back to colonial times. As they learn more about their legacy, Ava and Lauren form a close bond that is put to the test as they learn to navigate their new power, friendship, and love.
While Radcliffe seems like a safe haven, the shadow of McCarthyism looms large, an ever-present threat to the flourishing creative and intellectual life in Cambridge. And as girls from the Lilith Society begin to go missing, Ava and Lauren realize the witch trials of the past may not be as deeply buried as they once believed.
