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a parable about the dangers of fckboi lesbians. the titular Carmilla spends her time seeking out beautiful young women, often at parties, befriending them under a variety of assumed names. after proffering some unexplainable happenstance which compels her to sleep on her victim's couch (with never a single word about payment of rent and board), she immediately moves in. she then seduces her young victim with overwrought speeches about 'meeting in dreams as children' and 'dying in each other's souls' and 'the rapture of that cruelty which is love.' once the seduction is complete and Carmilla has had her way with the poor girl, she ghosts, never to be seen again. in the end, after plying these tricks too often in the same neighborhood, Carmilla is discovered and driven out by that eternal enemy of fckboi lesbians, a band of overly suspicious fathers. sadly this book so depleted Ireland's Strategic Comma Reserve that James Joyce ran entirely out in the last chapter of Ulysses several decades later.

A highly detailed account of the background, proceedings, and aftermath of the witch trial of husband and wife Hugh and Mary Parsons in Springfield, MA in 1651. Gaskill apparently had access to a ton of diaries because he has a lot of info on private conversations and thoughts, but he's honest when he doesn't have info on any point. He also has the governor's ledger of township transactions, which allows him to trace the monetary entanglements of the participants. The atmosphere is impeccable, communicating a sense of isolation and dread. Gaskill also does a great job of briefly spelling out various Christian heresies and arguments of the time without getting too far into the weeds. The blame for the affair is placed squarely on Puritan psychology - Calvinist chauvinism, fear of the world as full of soul-damning wickedness, and a contrasting focus on worldly wealth as a proof of one's fitness to serve God combine in the accusers to drive out those seen as different or unworthy and hopefully absorb their property. After tracing the main narrative, Gaskill describes his walks through the modern city looking for the old places within the new ones, and reminding us how the past impacts the present and the future. As with all books based on extensive individual research, there isn't a way to check much of anything until someone else goes back through the archives and comes to a different conclusion, so I'll have to trust him on the details. Highly enjoyable in a morbid way.