Over the next few weeks, we’ll be compiling a host of gift guides to help you with your Christmas shopping.

The Harry Potter books inspire so much love and devotion that they’re an extremely hard reading act to follow. Luckily for you we’ve compiled a list of our sure-fire post-Harry fantasy series to read.

The Worldquake Sequence

You never really know how it’s going to turn out when an acclaimed adult novelist turns their hand to writing children’s books, but in the case of Scarlett Thomas it has been a marvellous turn of events. The Worldquake books are funny, quirky and smart, and take place in a post-quake world where modern technology like the internet and mobile phones are no more.

Effie, Maximilian, Wolf, Lexy and Raven are students at the Tusitala School for the Gifted and Strange who are only just learning about their distinct and developing magical powers. They’re going to need them, because in both the Realworld and the magical Otherworld there’s no shortage of evil sorcerers, destructive secret organisations, book-hating witches and hungry dragons.

There’s three truly charming, page-turning books in this series already, and apparently there’s a fourth on the way in 2020!

For ages 9 and up.

The School for Good and Evil series

Heroes and villains, good and evil, light and dark has never been so fun as it is in Soman Chainani’s beloved The School for Good and Evil series.

Narcissistic Sophie is sure she belongs in the School for Good as a princess, and everyone who knows surly Agatha is positive she will end up as a witch at the School for Evil. But both girls are horrified when the results are flipped, and they (and all the other students of the two rival schools) have to cope with school years full of physical transformations, dangerous tests, fledgling magical powers, school pranks, confusing feelings and bad adults.

These books are rollicking adventures that play fast and loose with fairytale tropes, subverting gender stereotypes, neat binaries of good and evil, and almost any other possible expectations.

For ages 9 and up.

The Nevermoor series

A mood of magic, fun and wonder hangs over these fabulous books about the (mis)adventures of cursed child, Morrigan Crow. Morrigan is whisked away to the strange city of Nevermoor by her mysterious mentor Jupiter North, where she must pass a series of trials and join the secretive Wundrous Society. Morrigan and her friends’ magical education is full of surprising tasks and readers will love Townsend’s quirky world-building and sympathy for the underdog.

Enjoy the first two Nevermoor books now, and wait with bated breath for Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow in early 2020.

For ages 9 and up.

The Diviners series

Readers looking to move onto something slightly more mature will love Libba Bray’s excellent historical fantasy trilogy that centres on a group of interconnected young people with extraordinary abilities and big ambitions.

Set in the heady atmosphere of 1920s Manhattan and laced with chilling supernatural threats like a serial killer, a sinister sleeping sickness, and a ghost army, these novels are the perfect marriage of fascinating historical detail, twisting plots, Jazz Age lingo and a big cast of lovable characters you want to see survive. There are three Diviners books already; with the fourth and final book due in 2020.

For ages 13 and up.

Carry On and Wayward Son

Originating as fan-fiction in Rowell’s Fangirl, these two novels are romantic adventures set in a boarding school, and a loving homage to Harry Potter. Together, they cover teenage wizard Simon Snow’s last year at Watford School of Magicks, his changing feelings towards his annoying arch-nemesis roommate Baz, and their confusing year post-high-school on a road trip across America. There’s ghosts, vampires, secret plans, kidnapping, terrible father figures, action-packed battles, a juice-cleansing cult (!) and lots of kissing in these nemesis-to-lovers romps that will warm your heart.

Given the cliffhanger ending of Wayward Son, we strongly suspect there will be more books in this sequence.

For ages 14 and up.

Still stumped? We also sell gift vouchers which can be used in-store and online.