A dramatic story with plenty of incident

Unforgettable ... Whether you read The Ruin of All Witches for a startling insight into another age, or see its portrait of mob hysteria and witch-hunts as darkly analogous to our own uneasy times, this is one of those rare history books that stays with you and haunts you long after you have turned the last page. Superb.

The genius of Gaskill's book lies in his meticulous piecing together of daily life in New England ... Gaskill tells this deeply tragic story with immense empathy and compassion, as well as historical depth. A compelling study that offers a chilling insight into human nature in an age of superstition.

Breathtaking ... a great story, exquisitely told. I had to reread certain sentences aloud, just to savour their insight and cadence ... This book is history at its illuminative best.

The narrative is as compelling as a campfire story ... This is deeply atmospheric writing, carefully sourced ... As with the best history, the lessons of Springfield's past may serve to inform the citizens of a still-divided and conflicted nation.

Evocative right from the start, the reader is drawn in and excited in both body and mind ... It's a feast ... a valuable gift to every reader of history.

A portrait of a community during one of the first Puritan witch panics in the New World - and a timeless study of how paranoia, superstition and social unrest fuel fantasies ... Mr Gaskill's immersive approach brings the fate of his subjects movingly to life.

Simply one of the best history books I have ever read ... His deeply imaginative, empathetic and yet empirical exploration of a past moment of crisis is history at its finest.

A rich and beautifully written microhistory ... a work of remarkable historical reconstruction.

Malcolm Gaskill shows us with filmic vividness the daily life of the riven, marginal community of Springfield, where settlers from a far country dwell on the edge of the unknown. The clarity of his thought and his writing, his insight, and the immediacy of the telling, combine to make this the best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place, and the result is thought-provoking and absorbing.

A surefooted and gripping narrative ... Gaskill's Springfield joins Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou, Tony Wrigley's Colyton and other places of little intrinsic importance which for one reason or another have been immortalised by modern historiography... There is currently no memorial for Hugh and Mary Parsons in Springfield like those which have been erected in other places where witches were hunted. Perhaps they will get one now.

Reads with the fluency of a novel ... Crucially, Gaskill writes to make us see the world as those early Puritans saw it; how their own psychological fears, of financial ruin, of neighbours, of Native Americans and the hostile elements, could seed the first accusations of witchcraft.

An impressively researched account, bringing to life the fears and preoccupations of obscure and humble people, and setting them in the context of their time and place.

Powerfully evocative, a grimly compelling morality tale with more than one unexpected twist ... an outstanding achievement, haunting, revelatory and superbly written - a strong contender for the best history book of 2021.

A pulsating history of sorcery and superstition ... an academic feat but reads like a Stephen King thriller - and it's just right for our conspiracy-laden times.

A riveting micro-history, brilliantly set within the broader social and cultural history of witchcraft. Drawing on previously neglected source material, this book is elegantly written and full of intelligent analysis.

If the Stuarts are having their time in the sun at last, then Leanda de Lisle is one of the reasons they are. Masterful and pleasurable about a transformative century and a neglected, underestimated woman's role in it -- what more can one want from history?

A fascinating book about a fascinating woman -- Henrietta Maria's story deserves to be better known, and this book brings her completely alive

Henietta Maria's perspective allows this book to become something much more than mere analysis of politics and war. De Lisle understands that history is a story of people; she possesses a visceral understanding of the emotions that swirled inside Henrietta Maria

[A] thrilling story... a revisionist life of one of the most compelling and controversial women in British history... a book, like a life, should be measured against its own mission. And in this - to tell the story of Henrietta Maria's extraordinary life from her own perspective - Leanda de Lisle triumphs where her subject could not

Lucid, entertaining and combative revisionist biography

A triumph of a book which will revise opinion of this 'reviled' queen

Thanks to Leanda de Lisle's new biography, Henrietta Maria can finally answer the charges laid against her. In debunking and deconstructing these myths de Lisle gives an account of the politics of the time

The much-maligned Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, is thrillingly reassessed in de Lisle’s lyrical biography

Harrowing but excruciatingly funny

[A] blazing debut... Electric from page one

Scabrously funny... Were his account a novel, you might accuse it of being too far-fetched

His remarkable, funny, arrestingly well-written memoir brings to mind Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels, but is also entirely, exhilaratingly its own thing

Original Sins is a memoir that reads like a novel; a brilliant one. Matt Rowland Hill's struggle to overcome the perfect storm of his upbringing and addiction makes for a great story, but it's the blend of artistry, wit and skilfully timed stabs of brutality that make it such a vivid and thrilling experience. It's not that I didn't want to put the book down, more that it wouldn't release me from its grip

Brilliant... lively, engaging and extremely well written - scrupulously, painfully honest... sharply funny