Book series with weird family, witch mom

Question

I read these books when I was a kid about a brother and sister and their weird family. Basically the mom was a witch of some kind, and had a cool book that the kids got in to. They lived in a huge castle thing with their parents and grandma.

It was a lot like the Addams Family, but it was a series of books! I can’t even really remember what happened in them, but I think that in one, the dad goes missing for a while. Also, it might have been set in Italy because I remember the men calling each other “Monsignor” ?

The books were pretty short, never more than 200 pages long that I can remember.

Answer 1

Pure Dead series

This sounds a lot like the Pure Dead series (Pure Dead Magic, Pure Dead Frozen, and so forth). To quote Wikipedia:

The chronicles follow the Strega Borgias, a quirky, bizarre, Italian family: Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia (Luciano and Baci) and their four children, Titus, Pandora, Damp and Nieve, who live with their mythical companions in their fictitious home StregaSchloss, in Argyll. It consists of two trilogies: Pure Dead and Deep. The Strega-Borgias share similarities to The Addams Family.

Further, the mother is a witch, as you say:

Signora Baci Strega-Borgia - Luciano’s wife, mother to Titus, Pandora, Damp and Nieve. She dislikes being pregnant. Baci attends a witch academy, although she is absolutely appalling at magic.