Katherine Howe Books

Connie Goodwin is an expert on America's fractured past with witchcraft. A young, tenure-track professor in Boston, she's earned career success by studying the history of magic in colonial America--especially women's home recipes and medicines--and by exposing society's threats against women fluent in those skills. But beyond her studies, Connie harbors a secret: She is the direct descendant of a woman tried as a witch in Salem, an ancestor whose abilities were far more magical than the historical record shows. When a hint from her mother and clues from her research lead Connie to the shocking realization that her partner's life is in danger, she must race to solve the mystery behind a hundreds'-years-long deadly curse

The number one New York Times bestselling authors of Vanderbilt return with another riveting history of a legendary American family, the Astors, and how they built and lavished their fortune. The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story--of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention. From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society. The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family's story. In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, #1 New York Times bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America--offering a window onto the making of America itself.

While clearing out her grandmother’s cottage for sale, Connie Goodwin finds a parchment inscribed with the name Deliverance Dane. And so begins the hunt to uncover the woman behind the name, a hunt that takes her back to Salem in 1692 . . . and the infamous witchcraft trials. But nothing is entirely as it seems and when Connie unearths the existence of Deliverance’s spell book, the Physick Book, the situation takes on a menacing edge as interested parties reveal their desperation to find this precious artefact at any cost. What secrets does the Physick Book contain? What magic is scrawled across its parchment pages? Connie must race to answer these questions – and reveal the truth about Salem’s women – before an ancient family curse once more fulfils its dark and devastating prophecy . . .

"Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America from 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."--publisher.

When girls start experiencing strange tics and other mysterious symptoms at Colleen's high school, her small town of Danvers, Massachusetts, falls victim to rumors that lead to full-blown panic, and only Colleen connects their fate to the ill-fated Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago.

Von den eleganten Salons der Bostoner High Society zu den Opiumhöhlen Chinatowns. Von den quirligen Straßen des kolonialen Shanghai zu den Decks der Titanic. Boston 1915: Die 27-jährige Sibyl Allston lebt mit ihrem schweigsamen Vater Lan, einem ehemaligen Kapitän, und ihrem Bruder Harlan, einem vergnügungssüchtigen Harvard-Studenten, in einer Villa des noblen Viertels Back Bay. Trotz der eleganten Umgebung ist Sibyls Leben von Melancholie gekennzeichnet, seit ihre Mutter Helen und ihre temperamentvolle Schwester Eulah auf tragische Weise ums Leben gekommen sind. Den einzigen Trost findet Sibyl im Zirkel der verschrobenen Mrs Dee, wo sie regelmäßig an Séancen teilnimmt. Eine Fügung will es, dass Sibyl eines Tages ihre alte Jugendliebe, den Psychologieprofessor Benton Derby, wiedertrifft. Und es sieht so aus, als würde sich Sibyls Leben endlich zum Guten wenden, denn schon bald können der jung verwitwete Benton und Sibyl ihre Gefühle füreinander nicht mehr verbergen. Gemeinsam mit Benton kommt Sibyl jedoch einem alten Geheimnis ihrer Familie auf die Spur – und entdeckt plötzlich, dass sie eine ganz besondere Gabe besitzt, die sie die Welt mit völlig neuen Augen sehen lässt.