In
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Connie Goodwin is a graduate student at Harvard who is convinced to clean her grandmother's old house so that it can be sold. She finds the house has been ignored for decades and is full of mystery and omens. She discovers an old key belonging to Deliverance Dane, a woman accused of being a witch centuries before during the infamous Salem trials. Researching Deliverance Dane puts Connie is peril, and she is forced to entertain the thought that maybe witches really did exist, and still do. To unravel that mystery, she must find an old book of spells that Deliverance is supposed to have kept. Katherine Howe's debut novel has received positive reviews with USA Today saying, "Once in a while, a new writer offers up a hypnotic tale of the supernatural that has the publishing world quivering with excitement. In 2005 it was Elizabeth Kostova's
The Historian; in 2006 it was Diane Setterfield's
The Thirteenth Tale. This summer,
The Physick Book is magic."
