If you loved the wicked laughs in The Witches—from the Grand High Witch’s ghastly plan with Formula 86 to the chaotic hotel banquet—The Bad Beginning serves up the same macabre chuckles. Count Olaf, like the Grand High Witch, is an unforgettable, theatrical menace whose schemes (a sham marriage! bizarre disguises!) are as hilariously awful as they are suspenseful. You’ll relish the deadpan narration and the way danger and comedy mix while the Baudelaire children outwit a monstrous adult.

If the bond between the boy and his cigar‑puffing Grandmamma—teaching him how to spot wigs, gloves, and square‑toed shoes—was your favorite part of The Witches, you’ll love Bod’s relationship with Silas in The Graveyard Book. Silas trains Bod to survive in a perilous world much as Grandmamma does, offering calm instruction and quiet courage while the boy faces killers, ghouls, and ancient orders. It’s that same warm, wry mentorship wrapped around hair‑raising adventures.

Like how witches hide in plain sight—from the Norwegian countryside to the Hotel Magnificent—The Dark Is Rising reveals a hidden war underneath village lanes and winter markets. When Will Stanton discovers he’s an Old One, signs and rituals crop up in kitchens, hearths, and fields, echoing the way Dahl’s boy learns to read the world for danger. You’ll get that same tingle of the uncanny invading the familiar, only on a grander, frost‑lit scale.

If you connected with the intimate, first‑person voice of the boy in The Witches—confiding in you as he’s turned into a mouse and plotting with Grandmamma—Skellig offers a similarly close narration. Michael tells his own story as he discovers a strange, winged figure in a crumbling garage, blending everyday worries with uncanny wonder. It has that same feeling of a child quietly letting you in on a secret that changes everything.

If the Grand High Witch’s horrific transformations and potions grabbed you—the mousified children sprinting through table legs, the bottle of Formula 86 tucked into a sock—Coraline channels that same sinister magic. The Other Mother spins spells, puppeteers a false world, and tries to trap a child through guile and glamour. Coraline’s clever, brave counter‑plots will remind you of the hotel dining‑room scheme that turns the witches’ own magic against them.