Maryland, 1770. On All Hallows' Eve, in a fieldstone manor above the Big Elk, the Earl of Rexford is found butchered in his bedchamber. Blood-soaked poppets ring his body. Three small skulls swing at his window. And on the ceiling above his corpse, written in blood, is a warning eighty years old:
Remember the blood of mine.
The Hundred already knows who to blame. For generations, Cecil County has whispered of the Red Witch, a red-haired stranger brought down from Salem in the year of the trials and hidden away at Rexford Manor. Now the Earl's young ward, Hazel Voorstelt, has the same red hair, the same strange eyes and the same habit of walking the house at night. The parish curate is preaching her name from the pulpit. The servants cross themselves when she passes. And the dying have begun to pile up.
Gideon Hale has spent his life proving that miracles have makers. Home from years in Bengal, he is the great-grandson of a Salem minister who learned too late what fear does to justice, and he believes every curse has a human author. Summoned by his old friend Constable Reginald Lloyd, Hale sets about doing what he does best: measuring the blood, tracing the thread and following the poison back to the hand that poured it.
But Rexford Manor does not give up its secrets easily. Behind its paneled walls lie forged letters, a family settlement that disinherits its own children, cellars older than the house itself and a sealed room that should not exist. As the deaths mount and the storm closes in, Hale begins keeping a second list in his notebook, one he never expected to need: the things he cannot explain.
Because something in the walls of Rexford Manor is still knocking.
Three knocks. A pause. And then a fourth.
Steeped in the history of colonial Maryland and the long shadow of the Salem witch trials, Curse of the Red Witch is a gothic mystery of inheritance, erasure and the debts that blood remembers. It is perfect for readers of Sarah Waters, Kate Mosse and Stuart Turton, and for anyone who likes their locked rooms with a chill that lingers after the last page.
