Bingo row 3 – B
In my work circles, there’s a story that goes around sometimes where someone died in the automatic rolling stacks and that’s why the archives/records room has manual rolling stacks with a crank and not a button. Is that a story used to justify cheaper rolling shelving? Maybe, but it seriously happened to someone my friend’s friend knew (which I know makes it sound even more like an urban legend).
There is a scene in the Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia where the primary main character is doing research in such stacks and almost gets crushed in them. Even if that was a supernatural attack, it reminded me of that story and gave me flashbacks to working in archives and wondering how long it would take to find my body if I died from a fall or crashing artifacts.
But there are more reliably dangerous things in the book than stacks – evil witches!
The author is known as a genre hopper, but this book is indulgently consistent with a lot of her work; there’s AV, cult classics, and rock and roll. It’s comfortably Romantic (as in romanticism and not amor.)
There are three stories.
In 1900s Mexico, Alba defeats an evil witch who curses and attacks her family and farm. There’s an inappropriately uncle, dead farm animals, and Alba’s sweet and earnest boyfriend.
Beatrice (aka Betty) remembers the mysterious disappearance of her roommate, Ginny in a 1930s New England college setting. Witches were involved, along with coeds and seances.
In the 90s, Minerva, Alba’s great-granddaughter, goes to the same New England college and defeats the evil witch who disappeared Ginny for her thesis. And there are more dead animals, and yet I still enjoyed the book.
Like many (all?) of Moreno-Garcia’s work, it comes with a fun playlist on Spotify. It’s basically everything I want from one of her works.