Twenty individuals were executed and more than 150 imprisoned. The historical body of evidence that remains from the Salem witch trials of 1692 touched the hands, mind, and imagination of poet Nicole Cooley, compelling her to seek entry to an inaccessible past of lies. The Afflicted Girls, so named after the young women who claimed to be victims of witchcraft, spans the centuries to give voice to those both audible and silent on history’s pages—accusers and accused of several kinds: wife and husband, servant and master, congregant and minister, and, not least, bewitched and witch. Piercing, enchanting, Cooley’s poems form a remarkable narrative, one that displays the enormous cultural power the Salem witch trials retain in twenty-first-century America.

Witten presents a startling new theory of the Salem Village witch-hunts, which is certain to put this 300-year-old unsettled mystery to rest. Part parable, part star-crossed romance, and part supernatural venture, this is an intuitive human--and inhuman--history spun with a modern twist.

The story of the Salem Witch Trials told through the lives of six women Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted," 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev. Cotton Mather called "a desolation of names." The individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation. And although the flood of names and detail in the history of an extraordinary event like the Salem witch trials can swamp the individual lives involved, individuals still deserve to be remembered and, in remembering specific lives, modern readers can benefit from such historical intimacy. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.

In this cool, manifold chronicle of motherhood, Nicole Cooley tackles the experience of creation, occupying a new vernacular of love within danger. Her poems—animate self-reflections of both merged bodies and violent separation—confront the turbulence of fear and safety.

Book of poem by Cathleen Calbert highlighting the issues of women that are different.She says that she remains, perversely perhaps, attractedto afflicted girls: bright but troubled, beleaguered and embittered,funny but dangerous, righteous and wrong.

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.

This dramatic and deeply moving book combines a narrative that has the pace and excitement of a novel, a timeless portrait of bigotry and a self-righteousness, and an authentic history of the Salem witch trials. It stands alone in applying modern psychiatric knowledge to the witchcraft hysteria. Nearly three hundred years ago the fate of Massachusetts was delivered into the hands of a pack of young girls. Because of the fantasies and hysterical antics of unbalanced teenagers, decent men and women were sent to the gallows. Medical science that day had no better explanation than “the evil eye”; and so Massachusetts was precipitated into a reign of terror that did not end until the highest in the land had been accused of witchcraft—ministers, a judge, the Governor’s lady. One by one were brought to the gallows such diverse personalities as a decent grandmother; a rakish, pipe-smoking female tramp; a plain farmer who thought only to save his wife from molestation; a lame old man whose toothless gums did not deny expression to a very salty vocabulary. But from the very beginning some fought the hysteria, pitting sanity against insanity, and eventually forced the community to atone for its tragic error. Written with sly humor, much of the book reads like a novel. In the end, one is pretty sure what was wrong with Cotton Mather, the august judges, and the tormented young girls. “The Devil in Massachusetts is a vivid and compassionate reconstruction of the Salem witchcraft hysteria. Marion Starkey has written history which illustrates the past and at the same time packs and important contemporary moral.”—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. “It is certainly a ‘one sitting’ sort of book, with the dramatic appeal of the well-told story and the significances of good human history.”—Gerald Warner Brace “A fresh and full narration...of one of the most lurid, pitiful and deeply significant episodes in American history....”—Odell Shepard

From the acclaimed Printz Honor winner author Stephanie Hemphill comes this powerful fictionalized account of the Salem witch trials from the point of view of three of the real young women living in Salem in 1692. Ann Putnam Jr. is the queen bee. When her father suggests a spate of illnesses in the village is the result of witchcraft, she puts in motion a chain of events that will change Salem forever. Mercy Lewis is the beautiful servant in Ann's house who inspires adulation in some and envy in others. With her troubled past, she seizes her only chance at safety. Margaret Walcott, Ann's cousin, is desperately in love. She is torn between staying loyal to her friends and pursuing a life with her betrothed. With new accusations mounting against the men and women of the community, the girls will have to decide: Is it too late to tell the truth?

Tells the story of the victims, the accused witches, and the scheming officials that turned a mysterious illness into a witch hunt.

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.