It's the perfect time of year for tales of witches ... and author Alexis Powell offers up a fine collection in her new book, aptly titled A Coven of Witches (and subtitled "Frights to Tell at Night" on the cover, "Spellbinding Tales of Magic & Myth" on the title page; take your pick).

The book includes 20 original stories about witches, but they aren't drawn entirely from Powell's imagination. Rather, she borrowed characters and concepts from a bevy of witches from ages past, then reinvented them in new, often modern, sometimes fantastical settings. Her sources are divided into three categories: folklore, mythology and historical.

The stories are short and, while perfectly suitable for adult readers with a fondness for the supernatural, they're designed with younger readers in mind. Each story is only a few pages long, a good length for reading aloud at bed-time or sharing at a campfire. (That's assuming, of course, that you want the children in your audience to have spooky dreams!) To help tailor your choices, Powell has placed a one-, two- or three-star "fright level" by the title of each story, although none of them are truly terrifying.

Some are more gross than scary, and the mood of some is lightened with humor.

At the end of each story, Powell includes a brief note explaining her source material. Some of her inspirations include the Slavic witch Baba Yaga ("Stitched"), Kazakhstani witch Zhalmauyz ("Night Train"), Mexican bruja La Lechuza ("A Warning on Wings"), the Alpine Christmas witch Frau Perchta ("Tinsel & Terror"), Irish giant weather-witch Cailleach ("Washed Up & Away"), European hare witches ("May Day"), Greek sorceress Circe ("Gone Hog Wild"), Greek witch queen Hecate ("Shadows at Play"), Egyptian goddess witch Isis ("Scavenger Hunt"), the Finnish shapeshifting sorceress Louhi ("Bargain for Light"), Louisiana voodoo queen Marie Laveau ("Sympathy for the Dead"), English witches Mother Shipton and Mother Ludlam ("Petrified"), and the Salem witch trials ("Afflicted").

Remember, Powell is not telling stories specifically about the Cailleach, Circe, Isis and the rest; rather, she uses each character as her starting point and comes up with her own original story from there. Also, it's worth noting that the witches aren't always the villains of the story; sometimes they're helpful, if not heroic, and in a few cases they simply are.

The protagonists of the stories are usually children -- not the witches themselves -- who are somehow involved in whatever magic or mischief is happening. Not every story has a happy ending, so be warned.

Marina Vidal provides a colorful illustration with each story. I kind of wish she'd painted a few more to break up the text.

Overall, A Coven of Witches succeeds at its goal. I enjoyed the stories for the most part, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to parents, teachers and counselors of kids in upper levels of elementary school or middle school. (Younger kids might find some of the stories a little too scary; older kids won't find them scary enough.)