The Witches' Hammer - Softcover

Jane Stanton Hitchcock

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140241027 ISBN 13: 9780140241020

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

[Library Edition Audiobook CD in sturdy Vinyl case.]

[Read by Carrington MacDuffie]

A respected surgeon and rare-book collector is brutally murdered in his elegant Manhattan home, just hours after showing a book dealer the fifteenth-century manual of black magic - a grimoire - he'd received from a grateful patient. Now the doctor's blood is everywhere, and only the priceless grimoire is missing.

The horrific death of her beloved father has shattered Beatrice O'Connell's quiet, sane, and orderly world. Only by tracking down the vanished malevolent tome - with its dark spells and salacious illustrations - can she hope to put things right. But the search is leading Beatrice, her ex-husband, and a mysterious occultist into an expanding labyrinth of powerful evils, a tangled web that reaches as far as the Vatican itself. What coveted secrets are hidden in the missing volume that threaten to turn Beatrice into precisely what her unseen and unrelenting enemies are determined to destroy?

About this title

About the Author:

JANE STANTON HITCHCOCK has written several novels, including The Witches Hammer, Trick of the Eye, Social Crimes (the New York Times bestseller and People magazine's 'Beach Book of the Week' ), and One Dangerous Lady. She lives in New York and Washington, DC.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Hitchcock, whose first novel, Trick of the Eye (1992), was nominated for an Edgar, ventures onto riskier ground with this mystery thriller whose heroine defies a cabal of modern-day Inquisitors intent on bringing back the male-dominant Dark Ages. Gently raised by a devout Catholic mother and a rare-book- collecting surgeon father on New York City's genteel Beekman Place, 35-year-old Beatrice O'Connell, in the throes of a midlife identity crisis, has recently moved back in with her father in the wake of a failed marriage. Intent on her own troubles, the timid researcher hardly notices when her father receives another rare book as a gift in the mail from a grateful patient. But this tome--a 15th-century ``grimoire,'' or collection of black-magic spells, confiscated from a Nazi spy during WW II--harbors powers that Beatrice never dreamed of. Almost immediately, its disturbing illustrations of a female succubus devouring an innocent male inspire the first stirrings of Beatrice's latent sexuality, sending her off on an unlikely sexual adventure in Spanish Harlem. When she returns home, she finds her father dead and the mysterious grimoire missing. Stunned by her father's murder, confused by her newly discovered lust, distracted by conflicting relationships with her philandering ex-husband, her mysterious new lover, and an eccentric occult-book dealer who idolizes her, Beatrice nevertheless devotes herself to tracking down her father's murderer and learning the secret of the grimoire. In the process, she uncovers a snake's nest of woman-hating, Bible- toting, powerful men intent on burning all feminist ``witches'' at the stake and reinstating the dominance of Christian manhood. Calling the cops is not an option here, Beatrice soon realizes. Only by releasing the ``wolf'' inside herself can she hope to defeat this centuries-old expression of pure evil. Over the top, to say the least. Yet Hitchcock's clear, straightforward prose and civilized, articulate protagonists manage to keep the pages turning. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140241027
• ISBN 13: 9780140241020
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512