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    The Witches' Hammer
    The Witches' Hammer
    The Witches' Hammer
    Ebook470 pages7 hours

    The Witches' Hammer

    By Jane Stanton Hitchcock

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A respected surgeon and rare book collector is brutally murdered in his elegant Manhattan home, just hours after showing a book dealer the fifteenth-century manual of black magic—a grimoire—he'd received from a grateful patient. Now the healer's blood is everywhere—and only the priceless grimoire is missing.

    The horrific death of her beloved father has shattered Beatrice O'Connell's quiet, sane, and orderly world. Only by tracking down the vanished malevolent tome—with its dark spell and salacious illustrations—can she hope to put things right. But the search is leading Beatrice, her ex-husband, and a mysterious occultist into an expanding labyrinth of powerful evils, a tangled web that reaches as far as the Vatican itself. What coveted secrets are hidden in the missing volume that threaten to turn Beatrice into precisely what her unseen and unrelenting enemies are determined to destroy?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061763748
    The Witches' Hammer
    Author

    Jane Stanton Hitchcock

    Jane Stanton Hitchcock is the New York Times bestselling author of Mortal Friends, The Witches' Hammer, Social Crimes, and Trick of the Eye, as well as several plays. She lives with her husband, syndicated foreign-affairs columnist Jim Hoagland, in New York City and Washington, D.C.

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    Reviews for The Witches' Hammer

    2.5/5

    26 ratings4 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Not the best book I've read, but engaging. I reacted to this the same way I did to DAVINCI CODE--not the most technically strong book with many flaws (1D and 2D characters, "coinky-dinks" up the wazoo, serious suspension of disbelief moments, etc.) but it kept me turning the pages through to the end. It'd be a good read for fans of DAVINCI CODE, though this one deals with a medieval grimoire linked to the Malleus Maleficarum and the witchhunts of the Inquisition. It's also got a lot more sex scenes than the cover text ever hinted at (I bought the book as a bibliomystery and read it to get me thinking on contemporary book-collector-driven fiction.). Still, a fun book and an alleged "feminist thriller" from 1994 (as noted on Amazon) that deserves a 2.5 star out of 5 ranking. If I were blurbing this, it'd be "DaVinci Code for the View."
    • 1/5
      Ah, man. I hate to write anything negative, and I rarely do, since this is a Published Author (aka, God) and I am a humble piece of fuzz on the peach of life. But, wow. Predictable political screed, weird (and not in a good way), and seriously tedious. And I wanted to like anything by this author so much. Sorry.
    • 2/5
      For right-wing, misogynistic, Protestant religious nutsSomeone on the Religious Right claimed that Feminism taught women to practice withcraft, become lesbians, and neglect (or was that murder?) their families. This is a book he'll love to hate, although he'll probably be torn as to whether or not to hiss the villainous Catholics. It's also for women who believe that Feminism consists chiefly of getting laid outside of traditional norms of chastity, as opposed to picky details like legal and financial equality. We are told that a series of women are killed for being sexually active, and Hancock IS the author, but it seems a lot more likely that they are being selected because they are energetic social activists. No only is activism much more public, and more likely to have come to the killers' notice, but wouldn't someone attempting to wipe out sexual sin start with the far more obvious prostitutes? I began this book with great excitement, especially since I'm a neo-pagan, and I'll admit its a page-turner, but I don't think I'll read anything else by the author. It simultaneously reminds me why I don't call myself a Feminist and offends all my feminist sensibilities.
    • 2/5
      For right-wing, misogynistic, Protestant religious nutsSomeone on the Religious Right claimed that Feminism taught women to practice withcraft, become lesbians, and neglect (or was that murder?) their families. This is a book he'll love to hate, although he'll probably be torn as to whether or not to hiss the villainous Catholics. It's also for women who believe that Feminism consists chiefly of getting laid outside of traditional norms of chastity, as opposed to picky details like legal and financial equality. We are told that a series of women are killed for being sexually active, and Hancock IS the author, but it seems a lot more likely that they are being selected because they are energetic social activists. No only is activism much more public, and more likely to have come to the killers' notice, but wouldn't someone attempting to wipe out sexual sin start with the far more obvious prostitutes? I began this book with great excitement, especially since I'm a neo-pagan, and I'll admit its a page-turner, but I don't think I'll read anything else by the author. It simultaneously reminds me why I don't call myself a Feminist and offends all my feminist sensibilities.

    Book preview

    The Witches' Hammer - Jane Stanton Hitchcock

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