Why am I passionate about this?

After years of sporadic interest in the 1692 trials, Roach became obsessed with the subject after a 1975 trip to Salem itself. Her resulting history, The Salem Witch Trials: a Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege, called “a virtual encyclopedia of the entire affair,” and “a Bible of the witch trials,” led to her stint as a sub-editor for the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, and membership in the Gallows Hill Group that verified the site of the 1692 hangings, one of Archaeology magazine’s Top Ten discoveries of 2016. Her most recent book to date presents biographies of a half dozen of the major players in the tragedy, giving voices to women who, save for the tragedy, would likely have been lost to history.


I wrote

Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials

By Marilynne K. Roach,

Book cover of Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials

What is my book about?

Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

Marilynne K. Roach Why did I love this book?

This edition of the actual court papers provides not only a more accurate transcription, but also adds previously unpublished documents, background material, and extensive notes that both clarifies obscurities and identifies the individuals who wrote even the unsigned manuscripts. (Disclaimer: I was one of the project’s sub-editors.)

By Bernard Rosenthal,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book represents a comprehensive record of all legal documents pertaining to the Salem witch trials, in chronological order. Numerous manuscripts, as well as records published in earlier books that were overlooked in other editions, offer a comprehensive narrative account of the events of 1692-3, with supplementary materials stretching as far as the mid-18th century. The book can be used as a reference book or read as an unfolding narrative. All legal records are newly transcribed, and included in this edition is a historical introduction, a legal introduction, and a linguistic introduction. Manuscripts are accompanied by notes that, in many…


Book cover of Narratives Of The Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706

Marilynne K. Roach Why did I love this book?

This collection of contemporary 17th century works covering (mostly New England) witch-related cases before, during and after the 1692 trials was one of the earliest sources I discovered at my local public library back in the early 1960s. It provides a window into the varying reactions people had to the uncanny and what they did about it.

By George Lincoln Burr,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Narratives Of The Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.


Book cover of Witchcraft at Salem

Marilynne K. Roach Why did I love this book?

While I do not agree with all of the author’s conclusions, this book showed me the prevalence of folk-charms in the culture, as well as the psychological reactions humans have to stress that could explain some of what happened with the “bewitched.”

By Chadwick Hansen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Witchcraft at Salem as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Trial documents and contemporary narratives are used in this discussion of the practice of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England.


Book cover of Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England

Marilynne K. Roach Why did I love this book?

This study of suspected New England witch cases from a sociological angle, made the study of the Salem witch trials respectable again after decades of the topic being dismissed as beneath the notice of serious scholarship.

By John Putnam Demos,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Entertaining Satan as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the first edition of the Bancroft Prize-winning Entertaining Satan, John Putnam Demos presented an entirely new perspective on American witchcraft. By investigating the surviving historical documents of over a hundred actual witchcraft cases, he vividly recreated the world of New England during the witchcraft trials and brought to light fascinating information on the role of witchcraft in early American culture. Now Demos has revisited his original work
and updated it to illustrate why these early Americans' strange views on witchcraft still matter to us today. He provides a new preface that puts forth a broader overview of witchcraft and…


Book cover of In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

Marilynne K. Roach Why did I love this book?

While there is no one all-encompassing reason the 1692 panic proceeded as it did, Norton’s account presents the terrors and violence of the earthly warfare that dominated so many lives at that time, influenced everyone one else, and which had been largely ignored by previous accounts of the trials. 

By Mary Beth Norton,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked In the Devil's Snare as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salem witch trials in thisstartlingly original, meticulously researched, and utterly riveting study.

In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions. Horrifyingly violent Indian attacks had all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and many traumatized refugees—including the main accusers of witches—had fled to communities like Salem. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders, defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, pondered how God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages. Struck by the similarities between what the refugees had witnessed and what the…


Explore my book 😀

Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials

By Marilynne K. Roach,

Book cover of Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials

What is my book about?

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 put to death and the five who perished in prison, around 200 individuals had been accused, at least seventy had been "afflicted," and the populations of over 20 communities drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortexordinary folk as well as the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev, Cotton Mather called “a desolation of names.”

Book cover of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt
Book cover of Narratives Of The Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706
Book cover of Witchcraft at Salem

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Book cover of Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke

Shawn Jennings Author Of Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke

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Shawn's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Can there be life after a brainstem stroke?

After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left arm, he began typing his story, using one hand and a lot of patience. 

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Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke

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What is this book about?

Can there be life after a brainstem stroke?

After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left arm, he began typing his story, using one hand and a lot of patience.

With unexpected humour and tender honesty, Shawn shares his experiences in his struggle for recovery and acceptance of his life after the stroke. He affirms that even without achieving a full recovery life is still worth…


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Interested in the Salem witch trials, witchcraft, and New England?

Witchcraft 343 books
New England 114 books