Read an exclusive excerpt from Grady Hendrix's new horror novel

Through books like The Final Girl Support Group, The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires, and most recently How To Sell A Haunted House, Grady Hendrix has risen to become one of horror fiction’s brightest stars, adept at balancing humor and heart in his witty tales of terror. 

Now, after tackling slashers, vampires, haunted houses, and more, Hendrix has turned his eye to witches for his latest book, Witchcraft For Wayward Girls. Set in Florida in the 1970s and inspired by tales from Hendrix’s own family, it’s the story of five pregnant teenagers, all sent to live in the same home for unwed mothers. Isolated, stuck, and struggling to control their own bodies, they find solace in the unexpected arrival of a book called How To Be A Groovy Witch, and in studying its pages, find a way to reclaim their own power.

Here’s what Hendrix told The A.V. Club about how his witches took shape for this book:

“Each one of my books is a star turn for a monster—vampires, haunted puppets, demons from hell, haunted Swedish furniture stores—and this is my witch book. And to be honest: Witches kicked my ass. Trying to figure them out made me blow my deadline because they come in so many conflicting flavors: are they old ladies who live in houses made of candy and eat children? Are they naked women dancing in the woods and worshipping the moon? Innocent women on the gallows in Salem? Crones riding broomsticks to a Black Mass? I finally realized that the witches you get reflect how you feel about women and power, and the current moment we’re in completely shaped my witches because, let’s be honest, we could use an army of witches flying to our rescue right now. However, maybe they’ll save us, or maybe they’re coming to take their revenge for all the ways we’ve persecuted them in the past? With witches, you never know.”

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls will be in bookstores everywhere on January 14, but you don’t have to wait that long for a taste of what’s coming. Check out an exclusive excerpt from the novel below, then head over to the publisher’s page to find out how you can pre-order.

The double front doors stood wide open behind a pair of closed screen doors. Behind the dirty mesh of the screens she saw a long, dark hall disappearing deep into the house. Her dad searched for a doorbell, then gave up and banged on the wooden frame. The sound got lost inside the enormous old house. He tried again.

“The butler got drafted,” a voice over their heads said.

They both looked up and saw a waterfall of hair so blond it was almost white hanging over the wrought-iron railing of a little Juliet balcony directly above them.

“Pardon?” her dad called.

“The butler,” the girl called down. “He’s busy getting his ass shot off in Vietnam, so you’ll have to let yourselves in.”

Her dad didn’t approve of women cursing, and his jaw clenched for a moment, then he licked his lips and forged ahead.

“We’re here to see Miss Wellwood,” he said.

“Never heard of her,” the blonde said.

“Look—” her dad started, but the blonde pulled her head back over the railing and they heard the slap of a screen door from upstairs and she was gone.

A surge of hope ran through Neva. They’d come to the wrong place! They had the wrong address! Now they’d have to go home.

Her dad picked up her suitcase, pulled open the screen door, and ushered her inside. She went because she knew they’d be back out in a minute.

The house felt distant and quiet, like a library. The muffled sound of a woman talking came through the closed double doors on their left. Through the open door on their right lay a dark room, its heavy drapes pulled against the sun, old-fashioned furniture crouching in its shadows. Halfway down the hall a gargantuan brass chandelier hung in midair like a spider, and beneath it a big industrial floor fan turned its head from side to side, pushing warm air around.

The hall terminated at a faraway frosted glass door bearing a hand-lettered card reading Office. Attracted to any sign of authority, her dad headed down the faded red runner, making the floorboards creak. She followed because she wanted to see how he’d react when they told him there wasn’t any such Home here, and no sir, they’d never heard of one like that around these parts.

The hall was lined with pictures in complicated gold frames: hunting scenes full of ducks and dogs, portraits of important men no one remembered, a faded print of a river. They were all so clean. Every twisty curlicue in every gold frame, every inch of carpet, everything had been scrubbed until it was spotless.

They reached the office door and her dad knocked. He’d barely finished when someone behind them said, “Got a smoke?”

They turned and Neva recognized the girl from the balcony and she couldn’t help herself—she stared. This was the first pregnant girl her own age she’d seen outside a mirror. She was a couple of years older, but not out of high school, wearing a white peasant blouse and a harvest-gold, floor-length skirt, and her thick blond hair hung straight to her waist.

Being pregnant had made Neva a swollen, lumpy potato with a runny nose and pimples, but this girl held her stomach high and tight in front of her. Her arms looked long and strong, her shoulders were wide, and she had heavy eyebrows, a delicate chin, and clear skin. She looked powerful. Her left hand was held out for a cigarette. She didn’t wear a ring.

“No?” She swiveled her hand. “What about you, sister? Any smokes?”

Before they could answer, the office door swung open to reveal a mature woman dressed entirely in lavender. Her thick blue hair was piled in a high bouffant, and she looked exactly like President Nixon if he’d ever dressed as a woman. Delicious cold air spilled out of the door around her.

“May I help you?” Mrs. Richard Nixon asked.

“I don’t think they speak English,” the blond goddess said.

“Go to class, Rose,” Mrs. Nixon said.

“I’m reading your fascinating notices, Ethel,” Rose replied, pretending to study a typewritten sheet pinned to a bulletin board.

“I called Friday?” her dad apologized. “To say we were coming? From Alabama? With my daughter?”

That made Mrs. Nixon’s face go sour.

“We were expecting you earlier.”

“I’m afraid we didn’t make very good time,” her dad said. “There were a lot of stops along the way.”

Mrs. Nixon turned her hard stare on Neva. She saw everything: the endless bathroom stops, her pimples, her body growing out of control, her baby getting bigger every day. She saw Guy on top of her in the back seat of his father’s car, his hands unzipping her corduroy skirt, his sweat dripping on her face, fumbling at the hook of her brassiere. She saw how stupid she was, how she’d ignored all the signs that Guy only wanted her for one thing, how desperate she’d been for someone to like her.

Mrs. Richard Nixon turned back to her father and pulled her lips away from her teeth in a smile, revealing lavender lipstick caked around an incisor.

“Yes,” she said. “They can be quite inconvenient. Come in.”

She retreated into her office and her dad followed and just like that, all the hope drained from Neva’s body. They had come to the right place, after all. This was the Home for Unwed Mothers and they had a bed waiting for her.

Inside the office a gray metal desk loaded with gray metal office equipment stood on a shocking scarlet carpet. A window-unit air conditioner rumbled away, making the air crisp.

“Miss Wellwood?” Mrs. Richard Nixon called through an open door. “The new girl has arrived.”

Cover and excerpt from WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYWARD GIRLS by Grady Hendrix. Text copyright (c) 2025 by Grady Hendrix. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House. All rights reserved.