Here are 100 books that The Witches of Lorraine fans have personally recommended if you like
The Witches of Lorraine.
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I am a historian of early modern Europe, with a research focus on Spain and Italy. I first encountered archival documents from the Spanish Inquisition during research for my first book: I was already a fan of religious history but quickly became a fan of studying the law. I am fascinated by the ways in which people between the 1500s and 1700s used the legal systems at their disposal to recapture honor and pursue enemies. I am always on the lookout for ways in which religious prescriptions from centralized authorities did not match what was happening on the ground with ordinary, usually illiterate people.
No one does a better job of explaining the links between witchcraft accusations and fears over fertility than Roper.
Her ability to connect witches’ stereotypical activities—murder, cannibalism, sex with the Devil, and so on—with the demographic and subsistence crises of early modern Germany is remarkable.
She is an incredibly sensitive reader of primary sources.
A powerful account of witches, crones, and the societies that make them
From the gruesome ogress in Hansel and Gretel to the hags at the sabbath in Faust, the witch has been a powerful figure of the Western imagination. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thousands of women confessed to being witches-of making pacts with the Devil, causing babies to sicken, and killing animals and crops-and were put to death. This book is a gripping account of the pursuit, interrogation, torture, and burning of witches during this period and beyond.
Drawing on hundreds of original trial transcripts and other rare…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a historian of early modern Europe, with a research focus on Spain and Italy. I first encountered archival documents from the Spanish Inquisition during research for my first book: I was already a fan of religious history but quickly became a fan of studying the law. I am fascinated by the ways in which people between the 1500s and 1700s used the legal systems at their disposal to recapture honor and pursue enemies. I am always on the lookout for ways in which religious prescriptions from centralized authorities did not match what was happening on the ground with ordinary, usually illiterate people.
For the last twenty-five years, historians have been convinced that witch suspects drew on their personal histories as they confessed to being the Devil’s disciples.
Kounine flips that presumption on its head by asking how the processes of interrogations and torture might actually create a self-identity of being a witch, a category that was more flexible and nuanced than we might have expected.
Imagining the Witch explores emotions, gender, and selfhood through the lens of witch-trials in early modern Germany. Witch-trials were clearly a gendered phenomenon, but witchcraft was not a uniquely female crime. While women constituted approximately three quarters of those tried for witchcraft in the Holy Roman Empire, a significant minority were men. Witchcraft was also a crime of unbridled passion: it centred on the notion that one person's emotions could have tangible and deadly physical consequences. Yet it is also true that not all suspicions of witchcraft led to a formal accusation, and not all witch-trials led to the stake.…
A retired professor, an art historian who taught at Berkeley, Northwestern, and the University of Pennsylvania. Since my main interest is the emergence of Europe from the late Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period around 1500, I naturally gravitate to non-fiction books that engage with the shifting interests and values of that era, and my own books include similar efforts to discuss visual art in relation to religion, literature, politics, and wider contemporary cultural movements. Among my own books I would cite: Rubens, Velázquez, and the King of Spain (with Aneta Georgievska-Shine); Europe Views the World, 1500-1700; and the forthcoming Art and Dis-Illusion in the Long Sixteenth Century.
An unlikely complement to Huizinga tracing the overlap between magical beliefs in religion as well as astrology and the emerging accusations of witchcraft. Deeply immersed in research about 16th-17th century England, this book offers a form of historical anthropology for baseline views of the strange ideas that drove spiritual life.
Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas's classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am the Centennial Professor of history at Vanderbilt University. I have been reading and teaching about witchcraft and the occult for over thirty years. This is a topic that never fails to engage people of all backgrounds and has generated a plethora of books, some good, many not. I look for authors who understand the passions, psychology, and experiences of both accusers and supposed witches, while also exploring what it is about certain societies that leads to such claims being taken seriously, often with fatal results. The books I picked vividly convey the reality of the witch craze, while also asking some probing questions about persecutions in general.
I have read dozens of books on this subject and this is by far the best succinct overview I have come across. The author has written extensively on English witchcraft and knows the broader field inside out. It is truly amazing how much he is able to cover (clearly and vividly) in such a short space, from historic origins up to the present day. There is also a very helpful bibliography so readers can pursue certain topics in more depth.
Witchcraft is a subject that fascinates us all, and everyone knows what a witch is - or do they? From childhood most of us develop a sense of the mysterious, malign person, usually an old woman. Historically, too, we recognize witch-hunting as a feature of pre-modern societies. But why do witches still feature so heavily in our cultures and consciousness? From Halloween to superstitions, and literary references such as Faust and even Harry Potter, witches still feature heavily in our society. In this Very Short Introduction Malcolm Gaskill challenges all of this, and argues that what we think we know…
I love Paris. It is one of my favorite cities on Earth. One of the reasons I adore it so much is because it has such a palpable sense of enchantment. There is magic in its cathedrals and catacombs, its pâtisseries and feal markets, its rich tradition of art and joie de vivre. You can feel it in your soul as you walk through the city, under the gazes of its gargoyles and the charm of its cafes. Thus, I’ve always been drawn to stories that take this one step further—exploring a Paris that harbors actual magic.
Megan Shepherd has long been a favorite author of mine, and her Grim Lovelies series is the perfect mix of magic and Paris.
When Anouk, a witch’s enchanted familiar, is suddenly accused of her mistress’s murder, she must flee through the city to discover who actually committed the crime before time runs out and she turns back into an animal.
I loved the magical wishing fountains, the glitzy shopping sprees in Galeries Lafayette, and the tense race to keep the main character’s humanity.
"A magical dash through the streets of Paris. Part caper, part fairy tale, part opulent witch society, you'll be swept away by all of it. GRIM LOVELIES absolutely dazzles." -Kendare Blake, #1 NYT bestselling author of the Three Dark Crowns series
"A darkly enchanting saga...bound to attract fans of Leigh Bardugo, Holly Black, and more." -Entertainment Weekly
"I lost myself in this magical book." -Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of Caraval and Legendary
Seventeen-year-old Anouk envies the human world, where people known as Pretties lavish themselves in fast cars, high fashion, and have the freedom to fall in…
I am fascinated by the things people do and the reasons they give for doing them. That people also do things in culturally specific ways and that their culturally specific ways of doing things are related to their culturally specific ideas about what makes sense and what does not inspires in me a sense of awe. As a professor and historian, thinking anthropologically has always been an important tool, because it helps me look for the hidden, cultural logics that guided the behavior of people in history. It helps me ask different questions. And it sharpens my sense of humility for the fundamental unknowability of this world we call home.
The Anti-Witch is kind of a follow-up to Favret-Saada’s complex and brilliant Deadly Words, in which the author wrestled with the phenomenon of modern witchcraft beliefs in northern France’s Bocage region and tried to get inside the logic of those beliefs. I said modern witchcraft beliefs, because for me as a historian, what Favret-Saada contributed most to my understanding of this phenomenon lay in the way that she insisted on its historicity. That’s a historian’s way of saying that she did not treat witchcraft beliefs as “timeless relics” that some people weirdly “still” believe, but rather as an evolving set of practices and ways of thinking about how the world works, and the place of evil within it.
Jeanne Favret-Saada is arguably one of France's most brilliant anthropologists, and The Anti-Witch is nothing less than a masterpiece. A synthesis of ethnographic theory and psychoanalytic revelation, where the line between researcher and subject is blurred - if not erased - The Anti-Witch develops the contours of an anthropology of therapy, while deeply engaging with what it means to be caught in the logic of witchcraft. Through an intimate and provocative sharing of the ethnographic voice with Madame Flora, a "dewitcher," Favret-Saada delivers a critical challenge to some of anthropology's fundamental concepts. Sure to be of interest to practitioners of…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
"Write what you know" is worn-out advice you'll find on many a website, but I prefer to write what I want to know. Researching for background information is a far cry from studying the history of dates, places, and politics. For instance, you won't read in a history book that forks weren't used at the table in the Renaissance. That people didn't have zippers or right/left shoes, but they did have buttons. Noblemen wore high-heeled shoes. Women poisoned themselves with makeup of white lead (ceruse). Even with diaries, autobiographies, and social history books, trivial information of daily life is hard to find.
This nonfiction about a French priest who was burned at the stake in 1634 reads like fiction. Although I knew the story and how it ends, Rapley’s writing is suspensful and dramatic. The author keeps close to Grandier, whose character flaws contribute to his death. Grandier’s enemies are given their separate situations and in some cases are treated with generosity. Though the writing is not emotional, I was dismayed and hardly able to believe this actually happened.
As a Catholic priest, Grandier was an influential figure in the Loudun community and local government. A brilliant speaker, he was popular with his parishioners. But he had enemies, including Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII, who was trying to wrest political autonomy from local governors and centralize power in Paris. Grandier's support of the governor of Loudun meant that he was seen as an enemy of the crown. In addition, the debonair priest's romantic intrigues brought him into conflict with some of the town's most influential power brokers. When a nearby convent of Ursuline nuns began experiencing strange visions and…
I’ve been researching and writing histories of witchcraft for over twenty years because I wanted to know why people would confess to a crime that they couldn’t have committed. I especially wanted to know about women’s stories of witchcraft, and I found that fiction really helped me to imagine their worlds. I’m a Professor at Exeter University and I’m working on two new books about witchcraft trials: The Witches of St Osyth and Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials. I’m trying to feel every word and give the “witches” the empathy they deserve.
A brilliant anthropological account of witchcraft in the Normandy countryside in the 1960s. If it sounds dull, believe me, it isn’t! Jeanne Favret-Saada started her study of magical beliefs among French farmers thinking that she might find some superstitious vestiges of the sort that were laughed at by Parisian intellectuals. Instead, she found a complex, shifting world of theories and suspicions, as gripping as any detective novel. As she was drawn into the world of witchcraft, Jeanne found herself believed to be able to lift curses and began to fear that she herself might have been bewitched.
Her book is about how we tell stories of witchcraft – and indeed tell stories of anything. It made me question whether we could ever write a really solid, factual history of witchcraft: the story of a crime that didn’t exist, told by people who weren’t sure what had happened anyway. I think…
This 1980 book examines witchcraft beliefs and experiences in the Bocage, a rural area of western France. It also introduced a powerful theoretical attitude towards the progress of the ethnographer's enquiries, suggesting that a full knowledge of witchcraft involves being 'caught up' in it oneself. In the Bocage, being bewitched is to be 'caught' in a sequence of misfortunes. According to those who are bewitched, the culprit is someone in the neighbourhood: the witch, who can cast a spell with a word, a touch or a look, and whose 'power' comes from a book of spells inherited from an ancestor.…
I baked my first loaf of bread when I was eight. It was shaped like a brick and weighed about the same. With my grandma’s help, I tweaked the recipe, learned the importance of precise measurements, practiced my kneading, and ultimately won a blue ribbon for my efforts at the 4-H county fair. In the years since, my passion for food has grown. I love to learn how various crops are grown and harvested, I nearly cried when I tasted cheese I made myself, and I’ve been known to arrange travel around specific culinary adventures. For me, learning about food is nearly as enjoyable as eating it!
Kids’ cookbooks are about 1,000 times more awesome than they were when I was a kid. Recipes are easy to follow, they’re accompanied by colorful photos, and they feature foods kids actually want to make. For me, this cookbook, takes fun to the next level by including little food facts alongside most of the recipes (Did you know french toast isn’t actually French? The dish can be traced back to the Roman Empire – long before France was even a country!) The cookbook features standard breakfast, lunch, and dinner recipes but my favorite chapter is about Fake-Out Cakes. That’s right – they’re cakes, but they look like other things. There are instructions for making cakes that look like everything from a cheeseburger to mac and cheese. Bon appétit!
It's the ultimate kids cookbook from America's #1 food magazine: 150+ fun, easy recipes for young cooks, plus bonus games and food trivia!
"This accessible and visually stunning cookbook will delight and inspire home cooks of all ages and get families cooking together." -School Library Journal
"This is an exceptional introduction to cooking that children and even novice adult home cooks will enjoy." -Publishers Weekly
The Big, Fun Kids Cookbook from Food Network Magazine gives young food lovers everything they need to succeed in the kitchen. Each recipe is totally foolproof and easy to follow, with…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As Series Editor for Unheard Voices, I believe in the importance of the public gaining access to the voice of lived experience as it relates to the intractable issue of homelessness in our cities. Having gone through a brief period of not having any permanent residence in my twenties, I always had or felt a degree of affinity for the homeless and dedicated at least part of my career as a psychiatrist and then as a social entrepreneur to their plight.
The go-to book about voluntary homelessness, I always appreciate George Orwell’s amazing writing. It’s hard to put down.
The first half is about his time as a lowly kitchen assistant in the basement of a Parisian restaurant in the 1930s. The brutal divide between the rich and the destitute is better depicted here than in anything else I’ve ever read. The second half describes his time back in England and provides a heart-rending understanding of why homeless people are referred to as tramps and the ultimate emptiness of church-organized aid.
Although Orwell always had the option to opt out, his study of the lived experience of homelessness and the skill with which he captured it afterwards stand out as a colossus of the genre.
From the author of 1984, the classic semi-autobiographical story about the adventures of a penniless British writer in two cities.
Down and Out in Paris and London follows the journey of a writer among the down-and-out in two great cities. Without self-pity and often with humor, this novel is Orwell at his finest-a sobering, truthful protrayal of poverty and society.
