num_pages: 168
description: A startlingly imaginative, terrifying novel of the occult - set against the backdrop of England's civil war and accompanying religious turmoil - Malefice tells the story of a seventeenth-century witch who comes to dominate an English village and is brought down by the very people who have been dependent on her powers. The night before old Alice Slade was hanged for witchcraft in 1655, she was sequestered with the local vicar so that he might convince her of her sins and teach her how to confess properly during her last moments on the scaffold. The hours he spent with Alice shook the vicar to the core, as she confronted him with all that he feared to know about himself and the other villagers. Told in the voices of Alice's accusers and her only ally, the by-now mad ex-vicar Malefice lays bare the underbelly of a community torn asunder. Dishonest working women, a seemingly pious but actually swindling church warden, a drunken ex-soldier, a cynical squire - all reveal themselves as much by their lies as by their admissions.
language: English
title: MALEFICE
titlecomplete: MALEFICE
genres: Horror, Historical Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 33
publisher: Pantheon