Sangu Mandanna was born in India and grew up in Bengaluru, then crossed an ocean at eighteen to read English literature and creative writing at Lancaster University. She stayed: she writes now from Norwich, where she lives with her husband and their three children.
She is a genuinely range-y writer — her 2012 debut, The Lost Girl, was young-adult science fiction, and she has since written for adults, teenagers and younger children alike. But it is her cosy adult fantasies that most readers come looking for: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, which the New York Times named among its best romances of 2022, and A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping, the warm, witchy, slow-burn books that made her name.
If you are weighing up where to start or what order to read her in, the happy answer is that those two cosy novels are separate standalones — there is no wrong door, and no homework. Her actual series sit on the young-adult and middle-grade shelves, for when you want to follow her further afield.
On our shelves
CosyFound Family
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
A solitary witch who's spent her life keeping her distance takes a job tutoring three young magical children at a rambling, cat-haunted country house, and accidentally finds the family she never let herself want. There's a grumpy librarian, hot cocoa, and a great deal of bickering over dinner. Read it when you want to be folded into a warm household.
Where to start
Begin with The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches — her best-known adult novel, and the book that set the tone for everything cosy she has written since. It stands completely alone, asks nothing of you beforehand, and it is the one we keep on the shelf here: a lonely witch, three magical children, a rambling house, and a librarian in want of thawing.
Sangu Mandanna’s books
Mika Moon has spent her life keeping her distance, until she's hired to tutor three young witches at a rambling English house and accidentally finds a family of her own — prickly household librarian and slow-burn romance thrown in. Read it when the world has been too loud and you want a warm house instead; it is the one Mandanna we keep on the shelf.
On our shelves →
A standalone in which a witch who has lost most of her magic throws in with a grumpy scholar to win it back, and her place at a beloved enchanted inn along with it. If the first book left you wanting more grumpy-meets-warm and more cosy rooms, this is its natural companion — though the two share no plot.
Not cosy, but worth knowing: the opening book of her young-adult Celestial Trilogy, a space opera that retells the Mahabharata and follows exiled princess Esmae as she schemes to win back her family's throne. Sharper-edged and starlit, for when you want the scheming as much as the warmth.
The start of a middle-grade series in which anxious, artistic Kiki is pulled into Mysore — the mythical Indian world she drew in her own sketchbook — and has to help save it from a demon king. A kind, imaginative one to pass on to a younger reader.
Where it began: her 2012 debut, a young-adult science-fiction novel about a girl created as a living 'echo', built to step into another person's life should that person ever die. A quieter, more melancholy thread of her work, for the curious.
The first of a newer middle-grade series, about a British-Indian girl with ADHD who can talk to books and is swept into a magical school and library woven from Indian mythology and British folklore. A bookish, good-hearted adventure for the younger shelves.
Good questions
Her two cosy adult fantasies are standalones, so read The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches (2022) and A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping (2025) in either order. Her series go in publication order: the young-adult Celestial Trilogy runs A Spark of White Fire (2018), A House of Rage and Sorrow (2019) and A War of Swallowed Stars (2021); the Kiki Kallira books go Breaks a Kingdom (2021) then Conquers a Curse (2022); and her newest middle-grade series begins with Vanya and the Wild Hunt (2025).
A complete standalone. It begins and ends in one book, with no sequel and no prior reading required — which is part of why it is such a gentle place to start.
Only in spirit. They share an author, a warmth, and a fondness for grumpy men and enchanted houses, but no characters or plot — each is its own self-contained story, so either one can be your first.
It is a slow-burn cosy romance, low on stakes and gentle on heat — the warmth lives mostly in the found family rather than the bedroom. If you are here for hot cocoa, bickering at dinner and a librarian who needs thawing more than for anything steamy, you have come to the right shelf.
Her newest titles both arrived in 2025: A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping, her latest cosy adult fantasy, and Vanya and the Wild Hunt, which opens a new middle-grade series. We don't have word of what comes next — but we will add it here when we do.
Her own A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping is the natural next step — the same grumpy-meets-warm register, a different story. Beyond that, our Will Hug You and Cosy Corner shelves are stocked with exactly this kind of warm, witchy, found-family fantasy, which is the surest way we know to find your next one.
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