Magic and Mayhem Books in Order

If Hot Damned is Peterman's vampire family circus, Magic and Mayhem is her witchy small-town fever dream. The series opens with Zelda, a selfish, fashion-obsessed witch who has just gotten out of magical prison and been dumped into Assjacket, West Virginia, on probation. She has a deadline, a mysterious assignment, limited power, and very little interest in becoming a better person.

That is, of course, exactly what starts happening.

Assjacket matters here. The town is packed with shifters, magical weirdos, and the kind of local nonsense that can turn an ordinary day into a full supernatural emergency. Zelda is supposed to serve as a Shifter Whisperer, which means healing, helping, and getting pulled into everybody else's problems. Along the way she picks up a werewolf mate, a resurrected cat, actual friends, and a sense that maybe this backwater magical pit stop is turning into home.

The series grows from Zelda's personal probation story into something wider. Dark magic, family revelations, dangerous enemies, and questions about destiny all come into play. So do conventions full of fake witches, magical competitions, bizarre side missions, and plenty of trouble involving Sassy and the rest of the ever-growing cast. Peterman keeps the world silly on purpose, but there is real character growth under the jokes.

Tone is everything here. These books are wild, rude, affectionate, and proudly over the top. Peterman gets a lot of mileage out of Zelda's vanity and impatience, especially because she slowly turns her into someone capable of loyalty, protection, and real love. That balance, selfish jokes on one page, genuine heart on the next, is what makes the series stick.

Read this one if you want a magical town that feels one bad spell away from collapse, a heroine who learns compassion the hard way, and a supernatural community that is somehow both chaotic and deeply lovable. Assjacket is ridiculous. That is part of the charm.