I just finished Louise Penny’s latest – but it’s not a Three Pines/Gamache book. She wrote a political thriller with Hillary Clinton. I don’t usually read thrillers, but decided to try State of Terror because I love Louise’s writing. And it was great! Once I started reading it I couldn’t stop. Highly recommend.

I am about to start a new book by local historian and author Dan Gagnon, and I’ve been looking forward to it. The name Rebecca Nurse is familiar to many of us here in Danvers, but aside from knowing that she was a victim of the witchcraft hysteria and visiting her homestead, I don’t know much about her life. In A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse, the first full account of Nurse’s life, Gagnon “vividly recreates seventeenth-century Salem, and in the process challenges previous interpretations of Nurse’s life and the 1692 witch hunt in general.”

Watch our event with Dan Gagnon here.

And I am still working my way through Elly Griffiths wonderful Ruth Galloway series. Currently on #6, The Outcast Dead, and loving it.

About this book:

“The service of the Outcast Dead is held annually in Norwich commemorating the bodies in the paupers’ graves. This year’s proceedings hold special interest for forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway, who has just unearthed the notorious Mother Hook, hanged in 1867 at Norwich Castle for killing multiple children. Now Ruth is reluctantly starring in a TV special, working alongside the alluring historian Dr. Frank Barker. Nearby, DCI Harry Nelson is investigating the case of three children found dead in their home when another child is abducted. A kidnapper dubbed the Childminder claims responsibility, but is the Childminder behind the deaths too? The team races to find out — and after a child close to everyone involved disappears, the stakes couldn’t be higher.”