PBS Books Readers Club welcomes award winning author Silvia Moreno-Garcia to discuss her brand-new thriller The Bewitching, and her New York Times Bestseller, Mexican Gothic. The episode premieres on September 24th at 8PM ET as a PBS Books Facebook Live event, on the PBS Books YouTube channel, pbsbooks.org, and the PBS app.
The Bewitching spans three generations of haunting. Minerva is a grad student writing her thesis on a little-known macabre author, Beatrice Tremblay, whose most infamous novel may be rooted in a real-life disappearance. As Minerva’s research deepens, she discovers eerie connections between her own life, Tremblay’s dark past, and the frightening stories passed down by her great-grandmother— suggesting a sinister force may be stalking her across time.
Dark, elegant, and deeply atmospheric, The Bewitching blends literary horror with folkloric dread, drawing readers into a web of obsession, memory, and witchcraft. Silvia Moreno-Garcia masterfully crafts a narrative where the supernatural isn’t just a threat—it’s a legacy.
The PBS Books Readers Club will also explore the eerie brilliance of Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, a lush and chilling gothic novel set in 1950s Mexico, where ancestral power, colonial history, and biological horror converge in a crumbling mansion and the monstrous secrets hiding behind decaying walls.
Together, these haunting novels explore themes of inherited trauma, the power and peril of storytelling, the weight of history, and the fight for female agency in worlds shaped—and warped—by the past.
PBS Watch-Alike: Finding Your Roots
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with Finding Your Roots- a compelling series that explores the ancestral histories of people from all walks of life, using DNA and historical records to uncover powerful family stories. While the show features a wide range of backgrounds and identities, several episodes during Hispanic Heritage Month highlight the rich, diverse roots of Latinx guests—shedding light on migration, resilience, and cultural legacy.
These stories offer a deeper understanding of Hispanic heritage and its enduring impact on American history. Watch past seasons now on PBS Passport.
 About the Author
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
 About the Author
Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte is an Australian author living in Sydney with her partner and two children.
She has a Masters Degree in Screenwriting from the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and a number of published SFF works in Australia.
Her novel MIGRATIONS was her first foray into adult literary fiction, published in North America by Flatiron Books, and by Penguin Random House in Australia and the UK. It is being translated into over 25 languages, and adapted to film.
ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES, the New York Times Bestseller, is a romantic mystery about a biologist charged with reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands in order to rewild the landscape and bring a forest back to life.
Her third novel WILD DARK SHORE continues her love of romantic thrillers set in beautiful, remote places, and explores not only what it takes to raise children in a collapsing world, but the impossible choices we make to protect those we love.
