The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic. As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, The Witches is Stacy Schiff's account of this fantastical story -- the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians.

When Sabrina needs to do research for a local history paper, Salem helps her travel back in time to Colonial-era Westbridge.

In 1801 Elias Hasket Derby Jr. leaves his two year retirement. His father, the country’s first millionaire, has left him a money pit that many would consider one of the nations first American Castles. The expense to keep up this mansion and his leisurely life style has forced Elias back into action. He will take command of the local militia to fill in the ponds in the Common as part of an elaborate plot. The plot would entail the beautification of this neighborhood and entice a series of merchants and ship captains to build a series of two grand brick mansions set apart at fixed distances around the new park. All attached to a series of smuggling tunnels that would lead from the wharf, to their stores, and the banks. An elaborate scheme filled with Masons,pirates, a Secretary of the Navy, Senators, Representatives, a Supreme Court Justice, Presidents, and a touch of murder! Dig into the tunnels of Salem and find the underbelly of our nation!

Stories of magic, superstition, and witchcraft were strictly forbidden in the little town of Salem Village. But a group of young girls ignored those rules, spellbound by the tales told by a woman named Tituba. When questioned about their activities, the terrified girls set off a whirlwind of controversy as they accused townsperson after townsperson of being witches. Author Shirley Jackson examines in careful detail this horrifying true story of accusations, trials, and executions that shook a community to its foundations.

"During the decade of the 1850s, the Oregon Territory progressed toward statehood in an atmosphere of intense political passion and conflict. Editors of rival newspapers blamed a group of young men whom they named the 'Salem Clique' for the bitter party struggles of the time. Led by Asahel Bush, editor of the Oregon Statesman, the Salem Clique was accused of dictatorship, corruption, and the intention of imposing slavery on the Territory. The Clique, critics maintained, even conspired to establish a government separate from the United States, conceivably a 'bigamous Mormon republic.' While not in agreement with some of the more extreme contemporary accusations against the Clique, many historians have concluded that its members were vicious and unscrupulous men who were able, because of their command of the Democratic Party, to impose their hegemony on the Oregon Territory's inhabitants. Other scholars have seen them as merely another manifestation of the contentious politics of the period. Although the Salem Clique has been given considerable prominence in nearly every account of Oregon's Territorial period, there has not been a detailed study of its role until now. What sort of people were these men? What was their impact on the issues, events, and movements of the period? What role did they play in the years after Oregon became a state? Historian Barbara Mahoney sets out to answer these and many other questions in this comprehensive and deeply researched history"--Publisher description.

Salem Story engages the story of the Salem witch trials by contrasting an analysis of the surviving primary documentation with the way events of 1692 have been mythologised by our culture. Resisting the temptation to explain the Salem witch trials in the context of an inclusive theoretical framework, the book examines a variety of individual motives that converged to precipitate the witch-hunt. Of the many assumptions about the Salem witch trials, the most persistent is that they were instigated by a circle of hysterical girls. Through an analysis of what actually happened - by perusal of the primary materials with the 'close reading' approach of a literary critic - a different picture emerges, one where 'hysteria' inappropriately describes the logical, rational strategies of accusation and confession followed by the accusers, males and females alike.

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 . . .