Germany, 1659: When a dying boy is pulled from the river with a mark crudely tattooed on his shoulder, hangman Jakob Kuisl is called upon to investigate whether witchcraft is at play in his small Bavarian town. Whispers and dark memories of witch trials and the women burned at stake just seventy years earlier still haunt the streets of Schongau. When more children disappear and an orphan boy is found dead, marked by the same tattoo, the mounting hysteria...

1662. Alpine village hangman Jakob Kuisl receives a letter from his sister calling him to the imperial city of Regensburg, where a gruesome sight awaits him: her throat has been slit. Arrested and framed for the murder, Kuisl faces first-hand the torture he's administered himself for years. Jakob's daughter, Magdalena, and a young medicus named Simon hasten to his aid. With the help of an underground network of beggars, a beer-brewing monk, and an...

In 1668, hangman Jakob Kuisl, his daughter Magdalena and her husband Simon are traveling to the town of Bamberg. But what was planned as a family vacation soon becomes a nightmare; there is a murderer in Bamberg leaving the severed limbs victims in the trash outside the city. When rumors quickly spread that the murders are the work of a werewolf Jakob Kuisl must prove the superstition wrong and embarks on a search for the "devil of Bamberg."