The Witches

by Terry Pratchett

Discworld's witches, based around the rural and mostly vertical kingdom of Lancre, deliver babies, treat warts, and keep an eye on troublesome kings, vampires, and incursions from other worlds. They don't have leaders, but Granny Weatherwax is the most highly regarded and steely of the leaders they don't have, assisted by Nanny Ogg - mother of fifteen and brewer of lethally strong cider. Equal Rites introduces witchcraft on the Disc, but the core trio forms in Wyrd Sisters, which sets the template for the series: sharp parodies of well-known stories (Shakespeare, fairy tales, opera) filtered through Pratchett's rural comedy. Across six books, the cast expands to include Magrat Garlick and later Agnes Nitt, and the stories move from Lancre to Genua and back again.

Part of Discworld

The Discworld is the fictional world where English writer Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy novels take place. It consists of an interstellar planet-sized disc, which sits on the backs of four huge elephants, themselves standing on the back of a world turtle, named Great A'Tuin, as it slowly swims through space. The Disc is the setting for all forty-one Discworld novels; it was influenced by world religions which feature human worlds resting on turtles, as a setting to reflect situations on Earth, in a humorous way. The Discworld is peopled mostly by three main races: men, dwarfs, and trolls. As the novels progress, other lesser known races are included, such as dragons, elves, goblins, and pixies. Pratchett first explored the idea of a disc-shaped world in the novel Strata (1981).

Publication Order

1
Equal Rites
1987
2
Wyrd Sisters
1988
3
Witches Abroad
1991
4
Lords and Ladies
1992
5
Maskerade
1995
6
Carpe Jugulum
1998