Spooky season came a bit early this year thanks to Jenna Bush Hager’s September 2026 Read With Jenna pick: “The Witches of Cambridge” by Alice Hoffman.
“I cannot think of a more perfect book to welcome us to fall,” Jenna said, calling Hoffman one of her “absolute favorites.”
Hoffman is the author of over 30 books, but she’s most famous for her witches. Her famous “Practical Magic” series inspired the cult classic movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. The sequel, “Practical Magic 2,” based on Hoffman’s 2021 novel “The Book of Magic,” will hit theaters Sept. 10.
“The Witches of Cambridge” follows the tradition set by “Practical Magic”: Young women discovering their powers and their relationships with each other.
The book is set in 1950s Cambridge and follows two Radcliffe College students who are inducted into a secret society for witches, called the Lilith Society. One, Lauren, knows all about her heritage and bloodline; the other, Ava, is a stranger to her powers, and knows only that she feels out of place in the world.
“They quickly realize the witch trials of the past may not be as deeply buried as they once believed. It’s a novel about love, friendship and finding your power,” Jenna said.
Speaking to TODAY.com, Hoffman said the book began when she took a professional detour and attended the Harvard Divinity School.
“To this day I’m not exactly sure why I did it, and I’m so glad that I did it,” she says.
During what she called her “toughest class,” Theories and Methods, she was tasked with writing a paper about someone at Harvard she disagreed with.
“I asked her if I could do it as fiction. I knew right away who I was going to pick: The Mather family,” she said, explaining that Increase Mather, a former president of Harvard, and his son Cotton Mather had “not been friendly to witches.”
Puritan ministers Increase and Cotton Mather both had ties to the Salem Witch Trials.
Meanwhile, Hoffman was influenced by her classmates at the Harvard Divinity School, describing them as “young people who were searching and looking to restart their lives.” And after years living in Massachusetts, she felt for the first time immersed in Harvard. “It felt like there’s a whole other world that you know regular people don’t see,” she says.
And so, “The Witches of Cambridge” was born.
To Hoffman, who has written about witches in the past, a witch is a woman “who has power and who is not afraid.”
Don’t expect the same kind of story as you’ll find in “Practical Magic” series and its prequels, though.
Where “Practical Magic” is about sisters, Hoffman says “this book was more about situations with friends.”
“How important friendship is for women, and how deep it is for women. I’m not really sure what it’s like for men, but for women, sometimes I think it’s more important than romantic relationships,” she says.
She compares female friendship, fittingly, to a coven. And it’s one she doesn’t quite want to leave. Hoffman shares that she’s already working on her next book — a sequel to “The Witches of Cambridge.”
“I think there’s more to the story, so that’s been fun,” she says.
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