The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin Author:Robert J. Begiebing In the 17th-century records of what is now Exeter, NH, is the account of an unsolved murder. A woman's body, brutally mangled, was found in the Piscataqua River. Begiebing happened upon the mystery, began reading everything he could find about it, and became fascinated with what might have happened and with what his research revealed about that ... more »long-ago time. The more he read, the less valid seemed the customary stereotypes of iron, austere men and dour, straitlaced women that have come down to us as the people of Puritan New England. So he wrote a novel in which a young Englishman sets out to find the murderer and uncovers not only witchcraft, religion, suspicion and evil, but excitement, warmth, fill-blooded passion and human desire.« less