Bell, Book, and Murder

Like Susan Isaacs, Rosemary Edghill casts a keenly observant, friendly, yet faintly amused eye on an intriguing American micro-culture. Like The Witches of Eastwick, the Bast novels offer a very new view of the practitioners of a very old faith. Like Alice Hoffman, Edghill allows that there's still magic in the air.

Shakespeare's witches and their blasted heath couldn't be farther from the world of Rosemary Edghill's contemporary Wiccans. Today's witches hold coven meetings in New York City apartments and buy their books and supplies in cheerful neighborhood shops.

They even hold regular jobs—well, sort of regular. Bast, a.k.a. Karen Hightower, is a freelance graphic artist—the flexible hours leave her plenty of time for coven meets, gossip sessions, and, just lately, a little detective work.

Even good-hearted, nature-loving Wiccans aren't immune to political infighting, greed, and jealousy. In a community where everybody knows everybody else's business, where cliques turn into covens, and where sexual relationships can have more than ordinary power, passion can quickly turn to murder.

Armed with a quick brain and a clever tongue, Bast pokes into the dark corners of the Wiccan world and finds Truth of more than one kind.

"A saucy female detective whose language sparkles with wit and irony. The book works both as a mystery and as a novel of magic, and contains an accurate, if good-humored, look at today's witchcraft scene." —Margot Adler, author of Drawing Down the Moon , on Speak Daggers to Her