Malcolm Gaskill

The dark, compelling history of a colonial witch-hunt, from the author of Witchfinders. In the frontier town of Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, and property vanishes. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust, and denunciation....

The author of The Ruin of All Witches returns with a gripping, vividly told journey into his family's wartime past. Malcolm Gaskill knew two things about his great-uncle Ralph’s wartime adventures: he’d been a prisoner in Italy, and he’d cut his way out of a train with a knife and fork. Apart from that, he’d faded into family folklore, lost...

By spring 1645, two years of civil war had exacted a dreadful toll upon England. People lived in terror as disease and poverty spread, and the nation grew ever more politically divided. In a remote corner of Essex, two obscure gentlemen, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, exploited the anxiety and lawlessness of the time and initiated a brutal campaign to...

The strange and poignant story of a Second World War witchcraft trial, from the bestselling author of The Ruin of All Witches. One of the last criminal trials using the 1735 Witchcraft Act was, improbably, in London in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a middle-aged Scotswoman. This is her extraordinary story. Helen Duncan—known since childhood as 'Hellish Nell', for...

The bestselling author of The Ruin of All Witches returns with a gripping, vividly told journey into his family's wartime past. Malcolm Gaskill knew two things about his great-uncle Ralph's wartime adventures: he'd been a prisoner in Italy, and he'd cut his way out of a train with a knife and fork. Apart from that, he'd faded into family folklore,...