Reading List

Salem has featured prominently in novels and stories since before America existed. Here is a reading list of works set in Salem or inspired by Salem.

Salem is a city steeped in stories, bewitching tales of love and loss, murder and mystery. This is a non-comprehensive list of published works set in, and inspired by Salem. Read our stories and start writing your own!

Our Reading List

Salem Witch Trials

A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft

Rev. John Hale

The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronical of a Community Under Seige

Marilynne Roach

Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials

Marilynne Roach

A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience

Emerson Baker

In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692

Mary Beth Norton

Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians and Puritain Fantasies

Elaine G. Breslaw

A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse

Daniel A. Gagnon

Witches: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem

Rosalyn Schanzer

What Were the Salem Witch Trials

Joan Holub

Satan and Salem: The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692

Benjamin C. Ray

Non-Fiction

Maritime Salem in the Age of Sail

National Park Service

Our Silent Neighbors: A Study of Gravestones in the Old Salem Area

Betty J. Bouchard

Salem Cornerstones: Cornerstones of a Historic City

Joseph Flibbert, K. Goss

Salem Serves: Sites and Stories from the Military and Patriotic Heritage of Salem, Massachusetts, 1626-WWII

Bonnie Hurd-Smith

The Peabody Sisters

Megan Marshall Elizabeth

Hidden History of Salem

Susanne Saville

The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten: A Free Negro in the Slave Era

Charlotte Forten Grimke

Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life

Tamara Plakins Thornton

When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail

Eric Jay Dolin

If These Stones Could Speak

Daniel Fury, Lara Fury

The Founding of Salem: City of Peace

Benjamin W. Shallop

Salem's Cookin

Salem Chamber of Commerce

What Salem Dames Cooked

Derby Square Press

HausMagick: Transform Your Home with Witchcraft

Erica Feldmann

Reading the Leaves: An Intuitive Guide to the Ancient Art and Modern Magic of Tea Leaf Divination

Sandra Mariah Wright, Leanne Marrama

Lighting the Wick

Sandra Mariah Wright, Leanne Marrama

Death of an Empire: The Rise and Murderous Fall of Salem, America's Richest City

Robert Booth

Deliberate Evil

Edward Renehan

The Little Locksmith

Katherine Butler Hathaway

Fiction

The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs

Katherine Howe

The Heretic's Daughter

Kathleen Kent

The Lace Reader

Brunonia Barry

The Fifth Petal

Brunonia Barry

The Physic Book of Deliverance Dane

Katherine Howe

Map of True Places

Brunonia Barry

The Traitor's Wife

Kathleen Kent

The White Raven

Carrie D. Miller

Wicked Appetite

Janet Evanovich

Death in Salem

Eleanor Kuhns

The House of the Seven Gables

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hester

Laurie Lico Albanese

Witch City

Francis Sweeney

How to Hang a Witch

Adriana Mather

Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem

Rosalyn Schanzer

Conversions

Katerine Howe

Hocus Pocus and the All New Sequel

Eileen Stevens

Carry on Mr. Bowditch

Jen Lee Latham

The Scarlett Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Piece by Piece

Susan Tan

The Good Witch of Salem

Ashley Tina

Misery Islands

January Gill O'Neil

Rewilding

January Gill O'Neil

Underlife (New Voices)

January Gill O'Neil

Jap Herron: A Novel Written from the Ouija Board

Emily Grant Hutchings

Black Cat Tales: History and Hauntings of Old Salem

Daniel Fury, Lara Fury

The Good Thief

Hannah Tinti

The Crucible

Arthur Miller

Magic Lessons

Alice Hoffman

Join the Club

Join the Club