Vega Bloodmire has no problem with the label “villainous witch,” though she draws the line at being called a self-centered hag. It’s everyone else who minds her unscrupulous ways: the unruly students she turns into frogs, her mother who fears what will happen if the world discovers their ghoulish family secret, and the wimpy teachers at the magical boarding school where she works who only care about propriety and rules.

Yet when the bodies pile up, the community needs someone with moral ambiguity to solve their problem and bring wrongdoers to justice. Part amateur sleuth, part vigilante—and all parts wicked—Vega Bloodmire is the witch to call.

In the first book in the series, Vega finds a severed finger in her supposedly vegan ice cream, which wreaks havoc on her no-flesh diet. When a connection is drawn between this incident and the recent murder in the graveyard, an innocent ghoul is blamed. Only if Vega can embrace her secret ghoul powers and trust an unexpected ally, can she find the real killer to serve them their “just desserts”—all while remaining the most fashionable witch in the land.

This book starts with Vega Bloodmire’s life before working at Womby’s School for Wayward Witches when she was a new and inexperienced teacher at Lady of the Lake School for Girls.

Clean, cozy, no sex or swearing, PG 13—perfectly fine for teens or grandmas who like mysteries with magic.