95 Books Like Woman Who Glows in the Dark

As a healer and a bruja who is also a journalist who has covered stories about anything from politics and entertainment to wellness and traditional healing modalities—I enjoy educating people about the different ways they can approach their own healing journey. I’m the founder of The Bratty Brujita Botánica, a metaphysical shop offering products and services that are dedicated to helping folks discover their own magic. I’ve been featured in Freeform, Refinery29, Cosmopolitan, and Allure, for my work. I’ve also written on the topic of brujeria, spiritual cleansing, and ancestral veneration for outlets like Refinery29 and Popsugar.

As a healer and a bruja who is also a journalist who has covered stories about anything from politics and entertainment to wellness and traditional healing modalities—I enjoy educating people about the different ways they can approach their own healing journey. I’m the founder of The Bratty Brujita Botánica, a metaphysical shop offering products and services that are dedicated to helping folks discover their own magic. I’ve been featured in Freeform, Refinery29, Cosmopolitan, and Allure, for my work. I’ve also written on the topic of brujeria, spiritual cleansing, and ancestral veneration for outlets like Refinery29 and Popsugar.

As a healer and a bruja who is also a journalist who has covered stories about anything from politics and entertainment to wellness and traditional healing modalities—I enjoy educating people about the different ways they can approach their own healing journey. I’m the founder of The Bratty Brujita Botánica, a metaphysical shop offering products and services that are dedicated to helping folks discover their own magic. I’ve been featured in Freeform, Refinery29, Cosmopolitan, and Allure, for my work. I’ve also written on the topic of brujeria, spiritual cleansing, and ancestral veneration for outlets like Refinery29 and Popsugar.

I have been a witch since I was 21 years old—more than four decades ago! It has been my lifelong passion—you might say it’s my calling. I’ve written twelve books, almost all on witchcraft and related subjects. As a writer and a reader, I am often frustrated by the shoddy quality of books on the subject. It thrills me when really good ones come along. 

As a scientist, I love hard science fiction, especially when the story makes me think about the true nature of reality or takes me on an adventure to places unknown. We’ve all read the classics from Clarke, Heinlein, Bear, or Asimov. But books written decades ago are becoming increasingly dated as society progresses into a new century. (Will people of the future really chain smoke? And why are all the characters men?) Never fear, modern hard sci-fi is alive and well. Here are five recent books that tell an intriguing, uplifting, or awe-inspiring story. Even better than the classics, it’s hard sci-fi for the 21st century!

When I was a child, I was fascinated by the supernatural and wanted to believe in the paranormal. On reaching university, I discovered there was no reliable evidence for such phenomena but rather there was a much more satisfying explanation based on the weaknesses and wishes of human psychology. Development is critical to human psychology and as I specialized in children’s thinking, I found more reasons to understand the natural origins of the peculiarities of our reasoning. SuperSense was my first popular science book to expound my ideas, but all of my subsequent books apply similar novel ways of explaining human behaviour from surprising perspectives. 

I moved to New York City for school when I was 18 years old and found myself surrounded by people from all over the world. Every fourth person in New York City is an expat. It was fascinating to me and since then I have lived in three countries and done months-long artist residences in Morocco and Ireland. I also read books and stories about cultures from around the world and am particularly enchanted by Africa. Currently, I live on the Pacific coast of Mexico in the city of Mazatlán and have written two children’s books about Mexico. 

As a feminist writer, I first gravitated to light female-driven stories in college as a break from the heavy academic tomes I was reading. I tore through the chick lit section of my local bookstores and realized that there was so much more to the genre than I knew or had heard it given credit for. They explored relatable themes— friendship, injustice, love, loss, sex—while being unapologetically feminine and light. For my own writing, I still read a lot of heavy nonfiction about injustice and smashing the patriarchy, but I keep the lightness by blending the heavy stuff with humor—this genre’s specialty.

I write cross-genre fiction with a pen in one hand and a vintage cocktail in the other, filling the romantic void, writing novels when my husband deployed. When in port, we taught swing dancing and have been avid collectors of vintage sewing patterns, retro clothing, and antiques. All of which make appearances in my stories. I’ve always been fascinated with the paranormal and have had some unexplained experiences, some of those made their way into my stories as well. I live in a 1908 home in Texas that may or may not be haunted. I have book reviews, vintage lifestyle tips, recipes, interviews, giveaways, and games on my site!

I am a historian of twentieth century Germany and the Holocaust, but I am also a voracious consumer of popular culture. How do I justify spending so much time watching and analyzing horror and science fiction film and television? Well, write a book about it, of course. The first thing I realized is that many other brilliant scholars have thought about why this imagery permeates contemporary culture, even if I asked different questions about why. I hope you are as inspired and enlightened by this book list as I was.