Scary Times

Arthur Miller is dead, The Crucible came out 55 years ago, and Salem hasn't hanged an innocent woman in—what?—four centuries. So when will the town stop with the witches, already? Between the Bewitched statue downtown and the witch blood on sale, it's one big Spooky World—and it may get worse, thanks to a crop of new Salem-set supernatural novels: Sisters of Misery by Megan Kelley Hall and The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry (both out now), and The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent (9/3). Movie adaptations have been discussed. Come, ye legions of miserable, heretic lace-readers.

Doesn't someone, anyone, have something else to say about Salem? "If future books portray the city in a positive light and not like every house is straight out of The Amityville Horror," says Glen Hughes, who runs the Salem Insider website, "the residents won't complain too much." And if not? Curses!