Halloween arrives each year with children and adults alike dressed up in spooky costumes—a favorite among them being witches. This year, however, revelers can do more than just dress up; PW has compiled a list of three brand-new books about witches that publish just in time for Halloween.
In the first offering from Little, Brown & Company, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff presents the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials in The Witches: Salem, 1692 (Oct. 27, $26; ISBN 978-0-3162-0061-5). It all began in 1692 when a minister’s daughter started to scream and convulse. The end result less than a year later saw neighbors turn against one another, 19 men and women hanged, and an elderly man crushed to death.
Also releasing just in time for Halloween is Witches of America (Sarah Crichton Books, Oct. 20; 978-0-3742-9137-2) by Alex Mar. It explores witchcraft as a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and real religion. Sharing experiences from her five-year trip into the occult, Mar also gives an overview of modern American witchcraft in the book, which earned a starred review from PW.
The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World (Crown, Oct. 6; 978-0-3074-5106-4) by David Jaher sheds light on the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the purported Witch of Lime Street, Margery— the most credible spirit medium of the 1920’s. The pair crossed paths when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal, and in our starred review, we said Jaher’s account "paints a fascinating portrait of the spiritualism movement at the time."
As a bonus to the list, we included a fourth book, Ulinka Rublack’s The Astronomer and the Witch (978-0-1987-3677-6), coming from Oxford University Press in December. The book tells the little-known story of Johannes Kepler, a key figure in the scientific revolution, and his mother, Katharina, who was accused of witchcraft. Kepler conducted his mother’s defense during the six-year criminal trial, which rattled their small Lutheran community at a time of deep religious and political turmoil. Our starred review for The Astronomer and the Witch praises Rublack for giving readers "a nuanced look at a world in which most people, including Kepler, believed that witches existed."
