Novel Lunch

                          Meet us at Barr Memorial Library for Novel Lunch Book Club!

This time, we will be reading "How to Kill a Witch"!

How to Kill a Witch is co‑authored by human‑rights lawyer Claire Mitchell KC and writer Zoe Venditozzi and frames Scotland’s early modern witch‑hunts as a systematic mechanism for policing and silencing women within a theocratic and patriarchal legal order. The book traces the origins and enforcement of the Witchcraft Act of 1563, situating prosecutions in moments of social stress—crop failures, religious upheaval, and political instability—and shows how accusations disproportionately targeted women and the vulnerable.

The authors interweave case studies and archival evidence with legal analysis to reconstruct how accusations were manufactured, how confessions were extracted, and how courts and communities colluded to produce convictions and executions; the narrative emphasizes that roughly thousands were prosecuted and many hundreds executed, making the phenomenon both widespread and institutionally sanctioned. The book uses vivid individual stories to humanize victims while also mapping structural patterns that made such persecution possible.

A central strand is the book’s contemporary argument: the historical witch‑hunts are not merely a past atrocity but a lens for understanding how law, language, and social norms continue to marginalize and silence women today. The authors draw on their campaigning work (notably the Witches of Scotland movement) to show how historical recognition, legal redress, and public memory intersect with modern debates about gender, credibility, and justice.

Stylistically, the book balances scholarly research with accessible prose and polemic urgency: it aims to inform historians and legal scholars while galvanizing a broader public audience to reckon with the legacy of gendered violence and institutional failure.