The Ruin of All Witches The Ruin of All Witches

The Ruin of All Witches

    • 9,99 €

    • 9,99 €

Beschreibung des Verlags

Brought to you by Penguin.

*A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND BBC HISTORY HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021*


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.

'The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing' Hilary Mantel

'A bona fide historical classic' Sunday Times


Simply one of the best history books I have ever read' BBC History
'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

© Malcolm Gaskill 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

GENRE
Geschichte
ERZÄHLER:IN
KA
Kristin Atherton
SPRACHE
EN
Englisch
DAUER
11:04
Std. Min.
ERSCHIENEN
2022
24. Februar
VERLAG
Penguin Books Ltd
GRÖSSE
665,5
 MB

Hörer kauften auch

Hamnet Hamnet
2020
Imperium Imperium
2014
Shuggie Bain Shuggie Bain
2020
Ramble Book Ramble Book
2020
And Away... (Unabridged) And Away... (Unabridged)
2021
The Spy and the Traitor The Spy and the Traitor
2018