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Roadrunner Reading Challenge
Challenge yourself to read new authors, subjects, and genres.
Ebooks
Village Infernos and Witches' Advocates by Call Number: EbookThis book revises what we thought we knew about one of the most famous witch hunts in European history. Between 1608 and 1614, thousands of witchcraft accusations were leveled against men, women, and children in the northern Spanish kingdom of Navarre. The Inquisition intervened quickly but incompetently, and the denunciations continued to accelerate. As the phenomenon spread, children began to play a crucial role. Not only were they reportedly victims of the witches' harmful magic, but hundreds of them also insisted that witches were taking them to the Devil's gatherings against their will.
The Hatak Witches by Call Number: EbookAfter a security guard is found dead and another wounded at the Children's Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma, Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson are summoned to investigate. They find no fingerprints, no footprints, and no obvious means to enter the locked building. Monique discovers that a portion of an ancient and deformed skeleton had also been stolen from the neglected museum archives. Her uncle, the spiritual leader Leroy Bear Red Ears, concludes that the stolen remains are those of Hatak haksi, a witch and the matriarch of the Crow family, a group of shape-shifting Choctaws who plan to reestablish themselves as the powerful creatures they were when the tribe lived in Mississippi. Monique, Leroy, and Chris must stop the Crows, but to their dread, the entities have retreated to the dark and treacherous hollow in the center of Chalakwa Ranch.
Mountain Witches by Call Number: EbookMountain Witches is a comprehensive guide to the complex figure of yamauba--female yōkai often translated as mountain witches, who are commonly described as tall, enigmatic women with long hair, piercing eyes, and large mouths that open from ear to ear and who live in the mountains--and the evolution of their roles and significance in Japanese culture and society from the premodern era to the present. In recent years yamauba have attracted much attention among scholars of women's literature as women unconstrained by conformative norms or social expectations, but this is the first book to demonstrate how these figures contribute to folklore, Japanese studies, cultural studies, and gender studies.
Witch Hunts by Call Number: EbookFor three centuries, as the Black Death rampaged through Europe and the Reformation tore the Church apart, tens of thousands were arrested as witches and subjected to torture and execution, including being burned alive. This graphic novel examines the background; the witch hunters' methods; who profited; the brave few who protested; and how the Enlightenment gradually replaced fear and superstition with reason and science. Famed witch hunters Heinrich Kramer, architect of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, and Matthew Hopkins, England's notorious "Witchfinder General," are covered as are the Salem Witch Trials and the last executions in Europe.
Theme
To really enhance this year’s spooky season, we would like you to read a fiction or non-fiction book about witches. Some examples are listed below, and, as always, you can reach out to the library if you need any help.
Highlights
Wytches Volume 1 by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor ; PN6728.W98 S69 2015Everything youthought you knew about witches is wrong. They are much darker, and they are muchmore horrifying. Wytches takes the mythology of witches to a farcreepier, bone-chilling place than readers have dared venturebefore. When the Rooks family moves tothe remote town of Litchfield, NH to escape a haunting trauma, they're hopefulabout starting over. But something evil is waiting for them in the woods justbeyond town. Watching from the trees. Ancient...and hungry. CollectsWytches #1-6.
Outside the Bones by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor ; PS3604.I115 O98 2011This brilliant novel weaves Afro-Caribbean witchcraft in New York Citys Latino community with the sudden appearance of a young girl believed dead since infancy and the mystery of her mothers disappearance in Puerto Rico sixteen years ago.
Brida by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor ; PQ9698.13.O3546 B7513 2008This is the spellbinding tale of Brida, a beautiful young Irish woman, and her quest for knowledge. On her journey, she meets a wise man who teaches her about overcoming her fears, and a woman who teaches her ancient rituals. They see in her a gift, but must let Brida make her own voyage of discovery.
Wicked by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor ; PS3563.A3535 W5 1995Brilliantly inventive, Wicked offers us a radical new evaluation of one of the most feared and hated characters in all of literature: the much maligned Wicked Witch of the West who, as Maguire tells us, wasn't nearly as Wicked as we imagined.
Corrag by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor ; PR6106.L48 C67 2010February 13, 1692. Thirty-eight members of the MacDonald clan are killed by soldiers who had previously enjoyed the clan's hospitality. Many more die from exposure. Forty miles south, the captivating Corrag is imprisoned for her involvement in the massacre. Accused of witchcraft and murder, she awaits her death. Lonesome, she tells her story to Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist who seeks information to condemn the Protestant King William, rumored to be involved in the massacre. Hers is a story of passion, courage, love, and the magic of the natural world. By telling it, she transforms both their lives.
The Witch by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor ; BF1566 .H88 2017Why have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe's history . The witch came to prominence--and often a painful death--in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early-modern stake. This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft. Hutton, a renowned expert on ancient, medieval, and modern paganism and witchcraft beliefs, combines Anglo-American and continental scholarly approaches to examine attitudes on witchcraft and the treatment of suspected witches across the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, and North and South America, and from ancient pagan times to current interpretations.
Good Omens by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor ; PR6057.A319 G6 2006The classic collaboration from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, now a Prime original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant. Season 2 of Good Omens coming soon! "Good Omens . . . is something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated. Lots of literary inventiveness in the plotting and chunks of very good writing and characterization. It's a wow. It would make one hell of a movie. Or a heavenly one. Take your pick."--Washington Post According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon--both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle--are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .
Labyrinth Lost by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor, Juvenile Literature ; PZ7.C8153573 Lab 2016Publication Date: 2016-09-06The first book in the Latinx-infused Queer fantasy series from Zoraida Córdova, highly acclaimed author of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina, that follows three sisters--and teen witches--as they develop their powers and battle magic through epic questing in the realms beyond. Alex is a bruja and the most powerful witch in her family. But she's hated magic ever since it made her father disappear into thin air. So while most girls celebrate their Quinceañera, Alex prepares for her Deathday--the most important day in a bruja's life and her only opportunity to rid herself of magic. But the curse she performs during the ceremony backfires, and her family vanishes, forcing Alex to absorb all of the magic from her family line.
Harrow County Volume 1 by Call Number: JPL 3rd Floor ; PN6728.H357 B76 2015Emmy always knew that the woods surrounding her home crawled with ghosts and monsters. But on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she learns that she is connected to these creatures - and to the land itself - in a way she never imagined. Collecting the first four issues of Harrow County, the southern gothic fairy tale.
