About this item

Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America, compiled by the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and ConversionFrom a manual for witch hunters written by King James himself in 1597, to court documents from the Salem witch trials of 1692, to newspaper coverage of a woman stoned to death on the streets of Philadelphia while the Continental Congress met, The Penguin Book of Witches is a treasury of historical accounts of accused witches that sheds light on the reality behind the legends. Bringing to life stories like that of Eunice Cole, tried for attacking a teenage girl with a rock and buried with a stake through her heart; Jane Jacobs, a Bostonian so often accused of witchcraft that she took her tormentors to court on charges of slander; and Increase Mather, an exorcism-performing minister famed for his knowledge of witches, this volume provides a unique tour through the darkest history of English and North American witchcraft.



About the Author

Katherine Howe

Katherine Howe is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer of historical fiction. Her best known books are The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2009 and was named one of USA Today's top tend books of the year, and Conversion, which received the 2015 Massachusetts Book Award in young adult literature. In 2014 she edited The Penguin Book of Witches for Penguin Classics, a primary source reader on the history of witchcraft in England and North America. The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs, her latest novel for adults, was published by Henry Holt and Co in summer 2019. Her next project is The Vanderbilts: an American Dynasty, a popular history co-authored with CNN's Anderson Cooper, coming from Harper in fall 2021. She has appeared on "Good Morning America," "CBS This Morning," NPR's "Weekend Edition," the BBC, the History Channel, and the Travel Channel, and she hosted "Salem: Unmasking the Devil" for National Geographic. Her fiction has been translated into over twenty languages. She holds a BA in art history and philosophy from Columbia and an MA in American and New England studies from Boston University, and she has taught American history, visual culture, and writing at BU and Cornell. A native Houstonian, she lives in New England and New York City with her family, where she is at work on her next novel. She also puts hot sauce on everything.



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