Hour of the Witch

A Novel

By: Chris Bohjalian

Narrated by: Grace Experience, Saskia Maarleveld, Danny Campbell, Cassandra Campbell, Arthur Morey, Mark Deakins, Julia Whelan, Kaleo Griffith, Kirby Heyborne, Rebecca Lowman, Mark Bramhall

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the acclaimed author of The Flight Attendant: “Historical fiction at its best…. The book is a thriller in structure, and a real page-turner, the ending both unexpected and satisfying” (Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of the Outlander series, The Washington Post).

A young Puritan woman—faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul—plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense.

Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life.

But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary—a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony—soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary's garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must fight to not only escape her marriage, but also the gallows.

A twisting, tightly plotted novel of historical suspense from one of our greatest storytellers, Hour of the Witch is a timely and terrifying story of socially sanctioned brutality and the original American witch hunt.

Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!

About 15 mins of plot

Very poorly plotted and told too slowly and with too much repetition/rehashing of events. Some sloppy writing — main character asks A LOT of questions over and over again in interior monologues. And a very amateurish narrator. Skip it.

awful narrator

I was VERY distracted by the narrator/narration.
Her inflections and affect were disruptive.
I have liked this authors books before and found this poor narration over rode the content.

Your nextté lol no

I liked the story line, very easy to follow . On the. othe hand the audio could've used someone else reading.

Don’t hesitate on this book

I listened to a few minutes of the book and almost did not continue, but boy did I really really love it! Just took a little getting used to the language, but after a while, I realized that it actually added to the story

The Crucible Was Better

For such a "smart and well educated' MC she sure does do A Lot of remarkably stupid things where other people can see her.

I thought this was going to be suspenseful, thrilling and supernatural. It was none of them. I made it as far as the last trial scene hoping against hope that Black Phillip would appear in a puff of sulfur and gore the crowd or.... something..... anything that wasn't completely predictable from the second chapter. I no longer care who done it or why as I don't believe the last 45 minutes will reveal anything except that the MC is still painfully stupid.