Hour of the Witch -- Chris Bohjalian

<b><b><b><i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER - From the acclaimed author of <i>The Flight Attendant: </i> "Historical fiction at its best.... The book is a thriller in structure, and a real page-turner, the ending both unexpected and satisfying" (Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of the <i>Outlander</i> series<i>, The Washington Post</i>)<i>.</i><b><b><b><i> <p/></i>A</b></b></b></b></b> young Puritan woman--faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul<b>--</b>plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense.</b> <p/>Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life. <p/>But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary--a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony--soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary's garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must figh