The Witches

 Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem

It began in a brutal Massachusetts winter with a minister’s daughter screaming in convulsions. Less than a year later, nineteen people had been hanged, an elderly man was crushed under heavy stones, and a young colony was forever changed.

In 1692, fear swept through Salem with terrifying speed. Hysteria gripped everyone from rural farmhands to the colony’s most educated leaders and politicians. Paranoia turned neighbors against each other, and forced parents and children to trade deadly accusations. Beyond the fight for voting rights, the Salem Witch Trials stand as the singular moment in early American history where women occupied absolute center stage.

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Stacy Schiff brings this dark, surreal chapter of the American past to vivid life. Unpacking the psychological pressure cooker of early New England, Schiff uncovers how a few months of collective madness helped forge the legal, cultural, and political identity of a future nation.

Equal parts historical masterwork and haunting thriller, The Witches delivers a definitive, gripping account of the first great mystery on American soil.