When her mother dies and her best friend's family is implicated in the assassination of President Lincoln, fourteen-year-old Emily Pigbush must go live with an uncle she suspects of being involved in stealing bodies for medical research.

Susanna English desperately wants to join the circle of girls who meet every week at the parsonage, but she doesn't realize the leader of the group, the malicious Ann Putnam, is about to set off a torrent of false accusations that will lead to the imprisonment and execution of countless innocent people-victims of a witch-hunt panic. "The author's skillful manipulation of the conventions of the young-adult novel-particularly the rich exploration...

While waiting for a church meeting in 1706, Susanna English, daughter of a wealthy Salem merchant, recalls the malice, fear, and accusations of witchcraft that tore her village apart in 1692.

In 1542, nine-year-old Lady Elizabeth lives on an estate near London, striving to get back into the good graces of her father, King Henry VIII, and as the years pass she faces his death and those of other close relatives until she finds herself next in line to ascend the throne of England in 1558.