Those averse to magic need not apply... The perfect novel for Halloween!
The year is 1880.
Two hundred years after the trials in Salem, witches Adelaide Thom and Eleanor St Clair finally feel safe and have opened a tea shop in Manhattan, specialising in cures, palmistry and potions.
When an enchanting young woman called Beatrice joins the witches as an apprentice, she soon proves indispensable but her new life is marred by strange occurrences. She sees things no one else can see. She hears voices no one else can hear. Objects appear out of thin air, as if gifts from the dead. Has she been touched by magic or is she simply losing her mind?
Amidst the witches' tug-of-war over how best to nurture her gifts, Beatrice disappears but was it by choice or by force? In the desperate search the witches are confronted by spectres from their own pasts. In a time when women were corseted, confined and committed for merely speaking their minds, were any of them really safe?
In this weighty, wonderful novel, McKay takes a sidelong glance at misogyny through a veil of witches, ghosts, and other mystical entities in 1880 New York....
Skillful worldbuilding, fascinating characters, and a suspenseful plot make McKay's novel an enchanting, can't-put-down delight
