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Let Me Count the Ways (To Tell This Tale)

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By Robin Maxwell.
The story of Romeo and Juliet has been re-jigged a hundred different ways—from Broadway musicals to operas to ballets. Most recently, director Baz Luhrmann’s popular feature film starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet. What I didn’t know till recently was that Shakespeare’s play was not the first. Far [...]

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GRACE HAMMER by Sara Stockbridge – A Reader Review

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Reviewed by Audrey L. Vest
The Victorian Era in England at the height of the British Empire was a time of tremendous expansion. Public morals were strict, yet many Londoners lived in the grip of poverty and crime, especially prostitution. Charles Dickens depicted the harsh lot of the poor in his novels, populated with unforgettable characters. [...]

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King Charles II: One Merry Monarch

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By Susan Holloway Scott

A great many important historical events occurred during the reign of Charles II (1660-1685), including the last outbreak of the plague and the Great Fire. But Charles himself is most remembered today for his love life, unique among English kings. Charles loved women, and women loved him. From high-born ladies [...]

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Can Witch Trials Be Reasonable?

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By Katherine Howe
No matter how many Salem books appear, the question of New England witchcraft never seems to be exhausted. It forces us to confront the fragility of some of Americans’ dearest assumptions about ourselves: that we are tolerant, that we value the socially marginalized, that we are rational and can be persuaded by reasoned [...]

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Medical Curiosities, Authorial Resources

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By Kirsten Menger-Anderson
Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain began as a short story about phrenology. I was fascinated by the odd idea of determining personality from the bumps in our heads, and intrigued by the diagrams of crisscrossed heads containing “brain organs” ranging from poetic talent to the tendency to murder. What other (now discredited) medical [...]

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History is not for the Faint of Heart

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by Kathleen Kent

Awhile back, I got the opportunity to speak to my son’s school in a general assembly of students ranging from the 7th to 11th grades to talk about my novel recently published based on my own family’s stories about the Salem witch trials of 1692. As I looked across the mostly pained, [...]

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A 19th Century Abortionist

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By Beverly Swerling
It’s tempting to think the abortion wars started with Roe v. Wade, but it’s not true.

In the early eighteenth century abortionists advertised in New York City broadsheets offering “guaranteed cures” for “female problems,” code for an unwanted pregnancy. The cures took the form of a variety of purges and [...]

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