The Witches of Blackwood Grove Books in Order

The Witches of Blackwood Grove takes some of Shawn McGuire's favorite pieces, small-town mystery, witches, family strain, and starting over, and gives them a new shape. This is a midlife series, which matters. The heroine is not discovering herself for the first time. She is rebuilding after life has already knocked her around.

That heroine is Dusty Hotte. In The Caretaker, she loses her job and sees her house burn down on the same day. Then a threat against her granddaughter makes it clear that staying where she is is no longer an option. Dusty heads for her family's enchanted farm in Blackwood Grove, Wisconsin, a place full of elderly witches, familiars, ghosts, history, and more emotional baggage than any moving truck could carry.

It is not exactly a quiet reset.

What makes the series fun is the push and pull between safety and chaos. Blackwood Grove is supposed to be a protected place. Dusty comes there to keep her granddaughter safe and to get her feet back under her. But almost at once there is a dead man in the family diner, a cousin accused of murder, and the ugly possibility that Dusty may have brought trouble with her, or that trouble has been waiting there all along. The books understand that returning home can feel like refuge and trap at the same time.

Dusty is also carrying a complicated history with magic. She has reasons for wanting to leave that part of herself alone, and the series wisely does not rush past them. Her relationship to witchcraft is tangled up with regret, fear, family expectation, and the question of who she still gets to be in the second half of life. That gives the mysteries a little extra weight. Solving the crime is one thing. Reclaiming a life is another.

Family drives everything here. Not just the sweet parts, though there are sweet parts. This is family in the fuller sense, noisy kitchens, elderly relatives with strong opinions, generations rubbing against each other, and love that can be comforting one minute and exasperating the next. In The Crones, Dusty is trying to figure out how to run the family farm while also dealing with accusations, old mistakes that refuse to stay buried, and a town ready to blame her when things go wrong.

The tone is cozy, but with a midlife bite to it. There are ghosts and magical mishaps, but there is also menopause, money pressure, caregiving, and the plain exhaustion of having to start over when you did not ask to. That mix gives the series its own personality.

If you want witchy mysteries with family chaos, second chances, and a heroine who has already lived enough to know better but still gets pulled into trouble, Blackwood Grove is a very good place to start.