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Three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this eerie multigenerational horror saga from the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.
"Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches": That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that's why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.
In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay's most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay's manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.
Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.
Excerpt
The Bewitching
Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches. That was what Nana Alba used to say when she told Minerva bedtime stories; it was the preamble that led into a realm of shadows and mysteries.
Shortly after Minerva first arrived at Stone¬ridge, she'd looked toward the thick mass of trees that constituted Briar's Commons and heard a shrill cry that sounded like an infant's wail. For a moment she'd shivered in fear, thinking of her great-¬grandmother's tales of witches who drank the blood of the innocent on moonless nights. But it had been only a peacock.
She was used to the birds now, the gray peahens and the beautiful males with their dazzling displays of iridescent feathers. They'd sun themselves on the lawn in front of Ledge House and sometimes they'd even sit on the porch of the old mansion. The story went that when the college acquired the building and turned it into a dorm, the peacocks had been part of the deal. A superstitious old dean reckoned they were lucky. Thus it had become tradition to keep a few of them by the dean's house, though the birds liked to drift toward other buildings and roamed the campus with impunity.
Now as she stood near the window, she heard the same cry.
She couldn't see where the peacock was stationed. It was likely somewhere by the entrance, watching the last of the students make their exodus from Ledge House.
Her friends had told her she'd never get used to the cold and the snow of New England, hailing as she did from the temperate climate of Mexico City, but she'd handled the winter without misfortunes. It was the summer that made her anxious.
The campus was closing for the season. Within twenty-¬four hours all the dorms and facilities would stand silent and still, with a few resident directors like herself left to oversee the buildings. The library would be open, albeit with reduced hours, serving the students—¬mostly grad students—¬who would not fly or drive home for the summer.
The campus by the sea, with its greenery and its beautiful Victorian houses, with the sun shining and the ducks swimming placidly in the lovely ponds, ought to have inspired joy and relaxation. But everything irritated her. The quiet of the summer was the perfect chance to work on her thesis, if she'd had anything to write about.
Her progress had stalled. She'd done little in the winter and even less in the spring. Her adviser would expect a certain number of pages come fall. Minerva doubted she'd be able to produce much; her outline was a jumble of nonsense.
She couldn't afford to be anything except excellent. Her tuition at Stone¬ridge College was covered courtesy of a scholarship for academic high achievers. Her room and board were paid through her work in the language lab, helping Mr. Marshall with the flock of bored undergrads who needed a second-¬language course to graduate, and supplemented with her job as a resident director.
She'd always been able to juggle dozens of responsibilities without a hitch. Back in Mexico City, when she was in secondary school, she helped take care of Nana Alba. She'd come home, peel off her school uniform and change into comfy clothes, make dinner, give the old lady her medications, then complete her homework while keeping an eye on her. Great-¬Grandmother Alba died at the ripe old age of a hundred and one, and everyone said a nurse couldn't have done a better job taking care of her.
Could someone plateau at twenty-¬four? Could your brain shrink? She felt tired and listless all the time. Often, she was sad for no reason. She was in grad school, obtaining an English literature degree from the same college Beatrice Tremblay had attended. It was her childhood dream come true.
They'd said she'd be shocked by the cold of a Massachusetts winter, but the truth was Minerva knew all about New England. She'd lived in it, through the stories of a multitude of writers. She'd ambled through Peter Straub's ...
Excerpted from The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Copyright © 2025 by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Excerpted by permission of Del Rey. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Characters
1904:
Alba — the main character of this timeline, a teenager on a farm in Mexico
Arturo — her visiting cosmopolitan uncle
Tedeo — her brother, who disappears
1934:
Betty — the narrator of this timeline, a college student, friend of Virginia/Ginny, author of The Vanishing
Virginia/Ginny — Betty's roommate, a bohemian college student who goes missing
Carolyn — a wealthy college student and friend of Betty and Ginny, also appears in the 1998 story as the owner of Betty's archives
1998:
Minerva — Alba's great-granddaughter, a student at the college where Ginny went missing, studying Betty's work
Hideo — Minerva's gay friend and fellow resident advisor
Noah Yates — Carolyn's grandson, who drinks a lot and befriends Minerva
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Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Del Rey. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Bewitching follows the stories of three women living decades apart: one in 1904, one in 1934, and one in 1998. In this work by the author of Mexican Gothic, the women are whipsmart and curious, traits that draw them further into the mysteries surrounding them. All three stories center upon mysterious disappearances of loved ones—one in a Mexican farm town, and the other two at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts. In every situation, the disappearance follows the victim's reporting of ominous activity, like being followed or finding a dead animal that seems to be a threat. Upon investigation, the disappearances begin to seem supernatural, putting the women in danger when they get too close.
I enjoyed this novel and found it to be readable and compelling while still complex enough to occupy my mind. The three women—Alba, Betty, and Minerva—are likable, and it's easy to care what happens to them. All three are independent women whose love lives are not top priority, which I always find refreshing. Alba, from 1904, helps on her family's farm in Mexico following her father's death. Betty, in 1934, is attending college when her roommate mysteriously vanishes. And in 1998, Minerva, who is Alba's great-granddaughter, is writing her thesis (on a novel written by Betty).
Of all the characters, I most identified with Minerva, first noting that she and I have some of the same books. As a fan of 90s alt-rock, I loved when the author mentioned what Minerva listened to on her Discman. She even visits Boston, where I once lived. A character walking through Copley Square listening to PJ Harvey on headphones and about to dive into the library might well have been me. I felt excited by how much I related to her and loved the specificity of the cultural details.
I also appreciated the seamlessness with which the plot unfurls. There was never a moment in which I thought a character acted unrealistically, never a too-convenient plot point, or sensationalized moment of terror. The supernatural elements enter gradually, starting as eerie sensations and shadows. Because of the subtle introductions and the realistic characters, I easily accepted even the plot points that might have otherwise been hard to believe. The pacing, too, is excellent, with the author building suspense but not drawing it out needlessly.
Aside from the three women, there are other strong characters that I liked, such as Alba's cosmopolitan but moody uncle Arturo and Minerva's fellow resident director Hideo. One of my favorite characters was Noah Yates, a man with generational wealth whose charm makes for some lively exchanges with Minerva. In a story like this, I knew some of the characters were likely to be exposed as evil, but I appreciated how multifaceted they all were.
In Betty's story, her roommate Ginny is a bohemian who readily announces her love of Spiritualism and learns everyone's astrological sign. While some of the wealthy students look down on Ginny, Betty develops romantic feelings for her. The descriptions of Ginny's smile and charm made me reflect on glamorous hippie women I have known, and I spent some pleasant time contemplating what makes some people so dazzling. (I did not find an answer.)
It was also a treat learning more about Mexican theories and practices of witchcraft. I've read a lot about the occult in various cultures, but these characters and stories were new, and I found the magic in the world of the novel fascinating. A healer gives Alba a protection spell involving a dead bird with seven pins in it; she is told to remove the pins one by one, prick her finger, and reinsert them. Alba also employs other occult tools, such as placing scissors in water beneath her bed to see if they rust overnight, which would indicate a curse. She holds a flower to a sleeping person's mouth to see if the petals droop right away, which can reveal that a person is into the dark arts. In addition to being informative, the stark visuals linger in my mind.
While The Bewitching contains plenty of horror and occult elements, I didn't find it to be a dark or cumbersome read, and there's minimal gore. I don't think it would be off-putting or alienating to those who lack prior knowledge of this kind of subject matter. (I'm even recommending it to my mom!) At the heart of the book are strong, relatable women grappling with situations they don't understand. We all know how that feels.
Reviewed by Erin Lyndal Martin
J. M. Miro, author of Ordinary Monsters
Jessica Johns, author of Bad Cree
In Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Bewitching, Minerva refers often to stories published in a literary magazine called Weird Tales. The magazine was launched in 1923 "to showcase writers trying to publish stories so bizarre and far out, no one else would publish them," according to its website. It was that very mission statement that led to Weird Tales publishing writers who profoundly influenced the genres of horror and speculative fiction. H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith are its most enduring exports.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1890. In addition to writing original fiction, Lovecraft was also a ghostwriter and rewriter of others' work. His short stories and novels evince a fascination with the uncanny and a deep knowledge of New England.
Lovecraft is considered the originator of "cosmic horror," a genre also known as Lovecraftian horror. Cosmic horror fiction usually features a pessimistic worldview, and its disturbing content usually involves more isolation and abandonment than violence. Lovecraft honed these principles into his most famous thematic elements like Cthulu and the Necronomicon. While his work stands up today as a unique voice in horror, his values do not. Lovecraft's racism is extremely prevalent in his work, even when he is writing about supernatural elements.
Another writer who got his start in Weird Tales is Robert E. Howard. His cultural background was quite different from Lovecraft's: born in 1908, he was a Texan inspired by the oil boom of the early 20th century. As a child, he traveled the state with his father, who was a doctor. In the oil boom towns, Howard saw the seedy underbelly of society alongside the gory injuries and illnesses of his father's patients. He also developed a love of boxing, a skill he often gave to his male characters.
Howard began publishing in Weird Tales while still a teenager. He was the originator of a genre known as "sword and sorcery," which combines fantasy and horror. Over the course of his career, he wrote over 400 stories, which evolved to include elements of mythology and religion. In 1932, in a depressed state while visiting more oil boom towns, Howard created his own fictional town, Cimmeria. Cimmeria's most notable inhabitant was a man as lawless and dark as the land itself: Conan the Barbarian. Howard's writing career was fast-paced as he turned out more Conan stories alongside commissioned work from various pulp magazines dealing in fantasy, horror, and historical fiction. Tragically, the despondent worldview that inspired his writing was something he never overcame. In 1936, after learning his ill mother would not awaken from her coma, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The third of the most impactful Weird Tales writers is Californian Clark Ashton Smith, born in 1893, who is perhaps best known for his influence on other authors. Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Scott Bradfield drily observed that "for more than a century, Smith has been unfairly disregarded as a poet, a short story writer, a painter, and even a sculptor; had he perhaps enjoyed just a little professional good fortune during his lifetime, he might have gone on to spend his twilight years being unfairly disregarded in numerous additional endeavors: prose poetry, novel writing, drama, screenwriting, you name it."
While Smith wasn't as outgoing or self-promoting as other writers, he did make valuable connections. Originally hired to illustrate Weird Tales, Smith began publishing his work there and struck up a voluminous correspondence with Lovecraft, who became his champion. After Lovecraft's passing, Smith's output suffered. He'd always moved as far from realism as possible, and his work could be intellectually challenging as well as bizarre and hallucinatory. His prose was dense and hyperbolic as he described the landscape he created, a godless place with necromancers, eternal demons, and Martian ruins. While Smith never had the name recognition of the other two, his writing reached a vital audience that included some of the most legendary names in science fiction and fantasy, such as Ray Bradbury and George R. R. Martin. Smith died in 1961, and, while there are many fans of his work, it has yet to see a full-scale revival.
Since Weird Tales's start in 1923, readers have been given countless strange stories that don't sacrifice artistry. These three men are nearly synonymous with the magazine that fostered their groundbreaking work. It has ceased publication and been brought back multiple times over the decades, changing its format, publication frequency, and masthead. What has never changed is its commitment to the wild stories that inspired its creation.
Weird Tales magazine cover from 1942, art by Hannes Bok, courtesy of AdamBMorgan and Wikimedia Commons
Filed under Cultural Curiosities
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