SOMETHING WICKED

The autumn must read Something Wicked this way comes Accused Condemned Redefined On 20 August 1612 ten people from Pendle were executed before a vast crowd at Lancaster s Gallows Hill The condemned and their associates had endured six months of accusations imprisonment and torture their treatment was such that one of the group died in Lancaster Castle s dungeons while awaiting trial Today a thriving tourism industry exists in and around Pendle the former home of the so called witches yet virtually everything we know about the case originates from a single source Thomas Potts Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches hurriedly published in 1613 and distinctly skewed in favour of the prosecution Until now Sunday Times bestselling author Carol Ann Lee brings an entirely fresh perspective to the story by approaching it as true crime Having worked in the genre for more than a decade her research leads to revelatory discoveries transforming our knowledge of those shadowy figures behind ill famed names and the terrible events that befell them After four centuries of superstition and surmise the two central warring families each headed by a fiercely independent widow working as cunning women emerge fully formed as the book uncovers the reality of th