In this historical mystery series, the characters from Chaucer's immortal Canterbury Tales pick up where they left off, this time to tell their own personal stories of horror and mystery as they entertain each other—and scare the stuffing out of each other—on the long pilgrimage road to Canterbury.

This time, it's the Carpenter's turn to relive his worst nightmare: a chilling saga of betrayal and deception, and maybe supernatural murder, that he witnessed firsthand as a young apprentice carpenter outside Gloucester. Run out of town by thugs working for his would-be father-in-law, the carpenter joined the desperados in the local hangman's crew - one short after one of their own colleagues found himself hanging in a gibbet.

It was soon clear that the executioners were in for a big job. Somebody had been murdering young women from the forest paths around Gloucester, and when the good townspeople hauled in three disfigured hags—witches, they said—the mayor and his acolytes arranged for a quiet midnight trial that would take care of the problem as quickly, and as quietly, as possible.

However, when the hangmen got the so-called witches out to the forest, even they were scared off by bone-chilling night sounds, and the condemned were left hanging—but maybe not dead. With the witches' supposed coven leader on the warpath, exacting a bloody revenge on all the men who'd done her sisters in, the Carpenter alone could solve an increasingly intricate mystery and stop the murderers from claiming more victims.