Download or read book The Ruin of All Witches written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-08-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. “The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.
Download or read book The Ruin of All Witches written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. “The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.
Download or read book The Ruin of All Witches written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE* *A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR* 'A bona fide historical classic' Sunday Times 'Simply one of the best history books I have ever read' BBC History In the frontier town of Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation. The finger of suspicion falls on a young couple struggling to make a home and feed their children: Hugh Parsons the irascible brickmaker and his troubled wife, Mary. It will be their downfall. The Ruin of All Witches tells the dark, real-life folktale of witch-hunting in a remote Massachusetts plantation. These were the turbulent beginnings of colonial America, when English settlers' dreams of love and liberty, of founding a 'city on a hill', gave way to paranoia and terror, enmity and rage. Drawing on uniquely rich, previously neglected source material, Malcolm Gaskill brings to life a New World existence steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in curses and enchantments, and precariously balanced between life and death. Through the gripping micro-history of a family tragedy, we glimpse an entire society caught in agonized transition between supernatural obsessions and the age of enlightenment. We see, in short, the birth of the modern world. 'A great story, exquisitely told. This book is history at its illuminative best' The Times 'As compelling as a campfire story ... Gaskill brings this sinister past vividly to life' Erica Wagner, Financial Times
Download or read book Witches of Ash and Ruin written by E. Latimer and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern witchcraft blends with ancient Celtic mythology in an epic clash of witches and gods, perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic trilogy and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Seventeen-year-old Dayna Walsh is struggling to cope with her somatic OCD; the aftermath of being outed as bisexual in her conservative Irish town; and the return of her long-absent mother, who barely seems like a parent. But all that really matters to her is ascending and finally, finally becoming a full witch—plans that are complicated when another coven, rumored to have a sordid history with black magic, arrives in town with premonitions of death. Dayna immediately finds herself at odds with the bewitchingly frustrating Meiner King, the granddaughter of their coven leader. And then a witch turns up murdered at a local sacred site, along with the blood symbol of the Butcher of Manchester—an infamous serial killer whose trail has long gone cold. The killer's motives are enmeshed in a complex web of witches and gods, and Dayna and Meiner soon find themselves at the center of it all. If they don't stop the Butcher, one of them will be next.
Download or read book Witchfinders written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-31 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By spring 1645, two years of civil war had exacted a dreadful toll upon England. People lived in terror as disease and poverty spread, and the nation grew ever more politically divided. In a remote corner of Essex, two obscure gentlemen, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, exploited the anxiety and lawlessness of the time and initiated a brutal campaign to drive out the presumed evil in their midst. Touring Suffolk and East Anglia on horseback, they detected demons and idolators everywhere. Through torture, they extracted from terrified prisoners confessions of consorting with Satan and demonic spirits. Acclaimed historian Malcolm Gaskill retells the chilling story of the most savage witch-hunt in English history. By the autumn of 1647 at least 250 people--mostly women--had been captured, interrogated, and hauled before the courts. More than a hundred were hanged, causing Hopkins to be dubbed "Witchfinder General" by critics and admirers alike. Though their campaign was never legally sanctioned, they garnered the popular support of local gentry, clergy, and villagers. While Witchfinders tells of a unique and tragic historical moment fueled by religious fervor, today it serves as a reminder of the power of fear and fanaticism to fuel ordinary people's willingness to demonize others.
Download or read book Between Two Worlds written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1600s, over 350,000 intrepid English men, women, and children migrated to America, leaving behind their homeland for an uncertain future. Whether they settled in Jamestown, Salem, or Barbados, these migrants -- entrepreneurs, soldiers, and pilgrims alike -- faced one incontrovertible truth: England was a very, very long way away. In Between Two Worlds, celebrated historian Malcolm Gaskill tells the sweeping story of the English experience in America during the first century of colonization. Following a large and varied cast of visionaries and heretics, merchants and warriors, and slaves and rebels, Gaskill brilliantly illuminates the often traumatic challenges the settlers faced. The first waves sought to recreate the English way of life, even to recover a society that was vanishing at home. But they were thwarted at every turn by the perils of a strange continent, unaided by monarchs who first ignored then exploited them. As these colonists strove to leave their mark on the New World, they were forced -- by hardship and hunger, by illness and infighting, and by bloody and desperate battles with Indians -- to innovate and adapt or perish. As later generations acclimated to the wilderness, they recognized that they had evolved into something distinct: no longer just the English in America, they were perhaps not even English at all. These men and women were among the first white Americans, and certainly the most prolific. And as Gaskill shows, in learning to live in an unforgiving world, they had begun a long and fateful journey toward rebellion and, finally, independence
Download or read book Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch written by Rivka Galchen and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on real historical documents but infused with the intensity of imagination, sly humor, and intellectual fire for which award-winning author Rivka Galchen’s writing is known, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is a tale for our time—the story of how a community becomes implicated in collective aggression and hysterical fear. The year is 1619, in the German duchy of Württemberg. Plague is spreading. The Thirty Years War has begun, and fear and suspicion are in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of Leonberg, Katherina Kepler is accused of being a witch. An illiterate widow, Katherina is known by her neighbors for her herbal remedies and the success of her children, including her eldest, Johannes, who is the Imperial Mathematician and renowned author of the laws of planetary motion. It’s enough to make anyone jealous, and Katherina has done herself no favors by being out and about and in everyone’s business. So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold (or as Katherina calls her, the Werewolf) accuses Katherina of offering her a bitter, witchy drink that has made her ill, Katherina is in trouble. Her scientist son must turn his attention from the music of the spheres to the job of defending his mother. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture, and even execution, Katherina tells her side of the story to her friend and next-door neighbor Simon, a reclusive widower imperiled by his own secrets. Provocative and entertaining, Galchen’s bold new novel touchingly illuminates a society, and a family, undone by superstition, the state, and the mortal convulsions of history.
Download or read book A Storm of Witchcraft written by Emerson W. Baker and published by Pivotal Moments in American Hi. This book was released on 2015 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an historical analysis of the Salem witch trials, examining the factors that may have led to the mass hysteria, including a possible occurrence of ergot poisoning, a frontier war in Maine, and local political rivalries.
Download or read book The Okay Witch written by Emma Steinkellner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A School Library Journal Best Graphic Novel of 2019 A YALSA 2020 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers A YALSA 2020 Great Graphic Novel for Teens Sabrina the Teenage Witch meets Roller Girl in this hilarious, one-of-a-kind graphic novel about a half-witch who has just discovered the truth about herself, her family, and her town and is doing her best to survive middle school now that she knows everything! Magic is harder than it looks. Thirteen-year-old Moth Hush loves all things witchy. But she’s about to discover that witches aren’t just the stuff of movies, books, and spooky stories. When some eighth-grade bullies try to ruin her Halloween, something really strange happens. It turns out that Founder’s Bluff, Massachusetts, has a centuries-old history of witch drama. And, surprise: Moth’s family is at the center of it all! When Moth’s new powers show up, things get totally out-of-control. She meets a talking cat, falls into an enchanted diary, and unlocks a hidden witch world. Secrets surface from generations past as Moth unravels the complicated legacy at the heart of her town, her family, and herself. In this spellbinding graphic novel debut, Emma Steinkellner spins a story packed with humor and heart about the weird and wonderful adventures of a witch-in-progress.
Download or read book Hellish Nell written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Penguin Press. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the last criminal trials using the 1735 Witchcraft Act was, improbably, in London in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a middle-aged Scotswoman. This is her extraordinary story. Helen Duncan - known since childhood as 'Hellish Nell', for her uncontainable nature - was one of the most popular mediums of the twentieth century, holding seances around the country where she was believed to manifest the spirits of the dead. What happens when we die? It was the question of the age for a generation which had endured one world war and now was living through another. Mrs Duncan's seances offered an answer. But when she started foretelling naval disasters, she also attracted the unwelcome attention of the secret service. And so just weeks before the Normandy landings, absurdly, anachronistically, she was prosecuted for witchcraft and jailed. Was Nell a conjurer, a martyr or a security risk? Hellish Nell was first published in 2001 to widespread acclaim. It remains in this revised edition a fascinating window into the unsettled spiritual and psychological mood of the times: a sensational tale of spectacle, credulity and cruelty, and of Britain's last witch.
Download or read book Witchcraft A Very Short Introduction written by Malcolm Gaskill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the history and origins of witchcraft, from pre-history to the present day, considering why it still features so heavily in our culture
Download or read book How to Ruin Your Life written by Ben Stein and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-07 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to Ruin Your Life is a powerful self-help tool in the form of a work of humor. It is sardonic advice, presented with tongue in cheek, explaining how people can ''ruin' their lives. The essays cover topics such as ''Convince Yourself That Youre All That Matters,' Think the Worst of Everyone,' ''Pour Salt on Those Wounds,' and ''You Can Change People.' Seriously, though, to anyone who reads this book, it is an earnest warning about falling into traps of self-destructive behavior that can ruin any man or womans life. More than that, it comprises 35 steps that - if read and understood - provide a road map to making life work in the most effective way possible. It is humor and self-help all in one, delivered by Ben Stein, a man who has witnessed more than his share of people who did ruin their lives - as well as those whose lives have been wildly successful.
Download or read book Daughter of Lies and Ruin written by Jo Spurrier and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do the worst people sometimes make the best family? From the author of Winter Be My Shield and A Curse of Ash & Embers comes the next absorbing Blackbone Witches novel. 'If they didn't want to get turned into beasts and used to fuel a ritual, they shouldn't have attacked a witch. That's all there is to it.' There's something strange brewing in this tinder-dry forest -- a girl with a sword and a secret, a troupe of vicious bandits vanished without a trace, beasts that don't belong and a witch with a macabre plan. Elodie hasn't been learning witchcraft for long, but she knows enough to be worried, and the fact that her mentor Aleida wants to pack up and leave in short order isn't helping to settle her nerves. Elodie just hopes to get everyone out of this mess unharmed, but it's looking more unlikely with every passing hour. And when the strange witch's ire falls on her, Aleida's wrath sparks a fire that threatens to scorch the earth itself ...
Download or read book The Healing Power of Witchcraft written by Meg Rosenbriar and published by Zeitgeist. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with more than 100 spells and rituals, this accessible guide helps witches heal themselves, their community, and the planet. Welcome to the magickal world of healing through witchcraft! This timely guide helps you harness your power to heal with easy-to-follow spells and rituals designed for beginner witches. The Healing Power of Witchcraft features: • Introductory chapters that help you identify and tap into your magickal powers of healing and prepare you for healing work • More than 100 spells and rituals with clear instructions, suggested timing, and materials--both everyday and magickal--needed to complete them • Three sections of healing: one for yourself, one for your community, and one for the planet • Positive, joyful ways to perform physical, emotional, and spiritual healing Perfect for the modern witch who needs to fit spells and rituals into a busy day, The Healing Power of Witchcraft helps you use your witchy energy to heal whatever ails you and your world.
Download or read book Buckland s Complete Book of Witchcraft written by Raymond Buckland and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 1986 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This complete self-study course in modern Wicca is a treasured classic - an essential and trusted guide that belongs in every witch's library."---Back cover
Download or read book Witch Twins written by Adele Griffin and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVClaire and Luna may be witches, but there’s no easy spell to stop a wedding!/divDIV Though identical on the outside, ten-year-old twins Claire and Luna Bundkin are as different on the inside as peaches and peanut butter. Claire is mischievous and Luna is a dreamer, but they do share a favorite hobby: witchcraft. Whether it’s making breakfast or washing dishes, there’s nothing a five-star witch can’t accomplish with a wave of her pinkie finger. But there are two strict rules: Don’t tell Mom, and don’t try any spells without Grandy—their magical grandmother—watching./divDIV /divDIVWhen Claire and Luna’s father announces that he’s getting remarried to a loudmouthed Texas woman named Fluffy, the twins know they need to do something to stop the wedding. Fluffy wouldn’t be a bad stepmother, but Claire and Luna know that she would lure their father to far-away Houston. A spell might be the only way to save their dad, and they’ll try anything. Even if magic usually lands them in a pot of trouble./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features a personal history by Adele Griffin including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s own collection./div
Download or read book The Witch of Willow Hall written by Hester Fox and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Steeped in Gothic eeriness."--Nicola Cornick, USA Today bestselling author In Salem, they burned. Now, they will rise. New Oldbury, 1821 The house holds its breath, trying to outlast me… Something has awakened in Willow Hall. Eighteen-year-old Lydia Montrose can feel it. But she has no idea what it is. Rocked by rumor and scandal, Lydia, her parents, and her sisters, Catherine and Emeline, fled their sparkling life in Boston for the sleepy country estate. But bone-chilling noises in the night have Lydia convinced their idyllic new home wasn’t exactly vacant when they arrived. The Salem witch trials cast a long shadow over the Montrose family as the cloying heat of summer in Massachusetts mingles with something sinister in the air. The sprawling history of Willow Hall is no stranger to secrets, and its dark past soon calls to Lydia, igniting ancient magic she never knew she possessed. But with menacing forces unwilling to rest, threatening to tear her family apart, Lydia must learn to harness her newly discovered power or risk losing everyone she holds dear. Don't miss Hester Fox's next novel, THE BOOK OF THORNS, where two sisters who never knew the other existed meet on opposite sides during the Napoleonic Wars and must use the magic of flowers to solve the mystery of their mother’s death—while surviving the war raging around them... Look for these other gothic mysteries from Hester Fox: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library The Widow of Pale Harbor The Orphan of Cemetery Hill A Lullaby for Witches
