The Witch (Deluxe Edition)

Things haven’t been going well for Julia Barlow lately. As Freida McFadden’s The Witch opens, she’s lost her job and apartment and has left Manhattan for northern Massachusetts—namely, her grandmother’s estate, a grand old mansion called Pemberton that’s been in the family since ancestor Archibald Eldridge built it in 1660.

Julia’s been wary of Pemberton since age 9, when she awoke in the middle of the night as her room turned icy cold and an eerie voice whispered “See . . . see . . . seeeeeee . . .” in her ear. But now, despite years of adamantly refusing to return, she’s trying to work up the nerve to go inside once again. 

She knows it is, in many ways, a good idea: She agrees with her father that she should see whether it’s safe for Gram to remain at Pemberton, or if she’d benefit from assisted living. Plus, the Woodhaven Museum has proposed to buy and restore the estate, and proceeds from the sale would cover Gram’s care. But Gram’s sister, Ethel, insists everything is fine with her and longtime groundskeeper, Mick, on hand, despite the strange goings-on that still plague the estate.

For example, the grandfather clock stops at 3:41 a.m. every night. And sometimes, lights emanate from the supposedly empty attic as ghostly moans echo through the hallways. But Ethel’s sanguine about all of it; it’s just Caroline, Archibald’s second wife, who was burned at the stake for witchcraft. She’s buried in the backyard in an unmarked grave and understandably angry about her fate. 

Unable to talk to her increasingly confused Gram about her concerns, Julia decides to find out all she can about Caroline and Pemberton through conversations with handsome museum curator Henry Ziegler and secretive forays through Pemberton’s rooms and grounds. She wants to help Gram; why not try to put Caroline’s soul to rest while she’s at it? “It almost feels like the house is trying to tell me something,” she muses, “that there’s some message that only I can hear.”  

As Julia searches for clarity in the present day, McFadden also immerses readers in Caroline’s life in 1692. She highlights Caroline’s loneliness as the wife of much older Archibald (a prosperous merchant who pressures her to bear children while ignoring his servant and future third wife Molly’s malicious behavior) and conjures up a town and a time where accusations of witchcraft were wielded against women deemed strange, strong-willed or inconvenient.

McFadden—a prolific, award-winning and bestselling author recently named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2026—ably creates immediacy and tension in both storylines, and she amps up the suspense by way of short chapters and twists that will keep readers flipping the pages to the very end. It all makes The Witch a great read for those who like history with their mystery; revel in gothic haunted house tales like Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill and Riley Sager’s Home Before Dark; or are devoted fans (aka “McFans”) of McFadden’s wildly popular oeuvre.