Witch Trials Books in Order

The Witch Trials shifts Ben Alderson's supernatural storytelling into modern Oxford, but this is not a soft contemporary fantasy. It is a world of occult politics, family history, violent prejudice, and a magical contest built to break people. The series starts with Hector Briar, a witch who has spent years shaped by grief and revenge after Witch Hunters murdered his parents when he was a child.

Hector is not just any witch, either. He is the son of the last Grand High, which means his blood carries political weight whether he wants it to or not. He has spent much of his life hiding from both the Witch Hunters who would destroy him and the witches who want to use him. That makes the opening of the series feel tense right away. Hector is dangerous, hunted, and deeply suspicious of almost everyone around him.

Then the coven pulls him in, and the real engine of the series becomes clear. His blood is the key that starts the Witch Trials, a deadly contest meant to choose the next Grand High. The trials are not ceremonial. They are brutal, competitive, and tied to a larger struggle over the future of witch-kind. Rivalries, ambition, and old wounds come rushing to the surface, because every participant is playing for power, survival, or both.

The romantic tension is anything but gentle.

Arwyn Hopkin enters the story as both complication and lure, someone bound up with lies, performance, and dangerous motives. By the second book, that danger gets worse when ancient demonic power becomes impossible to ignore. Bahmet, the demon at the center of later events, turns the series from a story about a deadly magical competition into something even darker. Hector may survive the trials, but survival does not mean the damage is over.

Oxford is a strong setting choice for all of this. It gives the books an urban, almost secret-history flavor, where old power can hide inside modern streets. Witches and hunters are fighting a war most ordinary people never see, and that contrast works well with Alderson's style. The series blends paranormal romance, occult conflict, and conspiracies over leadership without losing the personal stakes that keep Hector's story grounded.

If you like enemies-to-lovers tension, magical competition, and a hero whose anger is half the point, this series knows exactly what it is doing. The Witch and His Crow sets up Hector, the coven, and the trials themselves. The Demon and His Viper deals with the aftermath, the demon-bound consequences, and a world where both witches and hunters are now playing for much higher stakes. These books are meant to be read in order, because the fallout is part of the fun.