The Book of Witching - by C J Cooke (Paperback)

About the Book

"A witch's curse cast centuries ago will strike again in this spine-tingling Gothic novel from the author of A Haunting in the Arctic. Clem gets a call that is every mother's worst nightmare. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip on the Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end. Even worse, her boyfriend is dead and her best friend is missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn't recognize her mother. And she doesn't answer to her name, but insists she is someone named Nyx. Clem travels the site of her daughter's accident, determined to find out what happened to her. But instead of answers, she finds a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly put to death for witchcraft four centuries ago and whispers of a hex she set in retaliation. Clem begins to wonder if Erin's strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind, or the effects of an ancient curse?"--

Book Synopsis

A mother must fight for her daughter's life in this fierce and haunting tale of witchcraft and revenge from the author of A Haunting in the Arctic.

Clem gets a call that is every mother's worst nightmare. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn't recognize her mother. And she doesn't answer to her name, but insists she is someone named Nyx.

Clem travels the site of her daughter's accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin's strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind, or the effects of an ancient curse?

Review Quotes

"Chilling and beautifully written, The Book of Witching gripped me from the very first sentence: I read it in one sitting. A haunting recreation of a real Scottish witch trial, this is CJ Cooke's finest novel yet." - Emilia Hart, New York Times bestselling author of Weyward

"This riveting slow-burn thriller from Cooke (A Haunting in the Arctic) connects the sins of the past with the horrors of the present in modern-day Scotland... Cooke does a nimble job of jumping between the present and 16th-century Scotland, providing lush description and snappy dialogue that brings the story to vivid, brutal life on the way to an ending that masterfully ties the many threads together." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A good pick for readers interested in witch trials throughout history, as Cooke melds elements of horror, historical fiction, family drama, and a police procedural into this witchy novel." - Library Journal

"The Book of Witching is brilliant and mesmerizing from start to finish and contains a final act that will have readers simply riveted. C.J. Cooke knows how to scare you, and her combination of the historical and the imagined storylines about actual witching in our world is the stuff of legend." - Book Reporter

About the Author

C. J. Cooke is an award-winning poet and novelist published in twenty-three languages. She teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women's writing and creative writing interventions for mental health.