A darkly luminous new anthology collecting the most terrifying horror stories by renowned female authors, presenting anew these forgotten classics to the modern reader. Readers are well aware that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein: few know how many other tales of terror she created. In addition to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote some surprisingly effective horror stories. The year after Little Women appeared, Louisa May Alcott published one of the first mummy tales. These ladies weren’t alone. From the earliest days of Gothic and horror fiction, women were exploring the frontiers of fear, dreaming dark dreams that will still keep you up at night. More Deadly than the Male includes unexpected horror tales by Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and forgotten writers like Mary Cholmondely and Charlotte Riddell, whose work deserves a modern audience. Readers will be drawn in by the familiar names and intrigued by their rare stories. In The Beckside Boggle, Alice Rea brings a common piece of English folklore to hair-raising life, while Helene Blavatsky, best known as the founder of the spiritualist Theosophical Society, conjures up a solid and satisfying ghost story in The Cave of the Echoes. Edith Wharton’s great novel The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer prize, yet her horror stories are known only to a comparative few. Readers will discover lost and forgotten women who wrote horror every bit as effectively as their male contemporaries. They will learn about their lives and careers, the challenges they faced as women working in a male-dominated field, the way they overcame those challenges, and the way they approached the genre—which was often subtler, more psychological, and more disturbing.

Many people find it impossible to believe women are capable of committing brutal murders, but this book shows otherwise. Katherine Knight donned a black negligee before stabbing her lover John Price 37 times, then serving up his corpse for dinner with baked potatoes, pumpkin and all the trimmings. Sue Basso became supermarket packer Buddy Musso's 'lady love', but his dreams of happiness were shredded when she and her friends tortured him to death for a paltry $15,000 life insurance policy. Shelly Michael injected her husband with a drug that led to death by slow suffocation, then she set their house on fire. Each of the cases documented here makes for a chilling read, proving that evil transcends the sexes.

Peter Milton had always promised himself he would never again live in poverty, as he had done as a child. That promise became an obsession, so great, it took over his life. He robs and cheats to climb the social ladder, riding roughshod over anyone who gets in his way. He warms his way into the affections of the Managing Director’s only daughter, Katherine, whom he marries, purely to get his hands on the business. His mission is achieved, when Katherine’s father dies. He cheats on her at every opportunity. Katharine sets a trap, springing it with perfect timing, causing him to be incarcerated, humiliated and lose all his ill gotten gains. After he is released, he sets about climbing the social ladder again by the only way he knows - using deviousness and underhand dealings. He is about to realise his goal, but an ex-girlfriend appears and threatens to throw a spanner in the works. He plots to have her done away with, but he is in for the shock of his life. Once again he has failed to appreciate the cunning of the fairer sex. Book reviews online: PublishedBestsellers website.

The phenomenon of the female serial killer has been increasingly capturing the public's attention. This book tells the stories of these women, from childhood to their obsession to kill. From the court case to the psychiatrist's reports, it explores the caverns of the female serial killer's mind.

At least one of them is mad, they're all bad, and most of them are dangerous to know. They're a first 11 with a difference - 11 Australian women criminals whose names and reputations are synonymous with lawless, dangerous and often violent behaviour. Sadistic killers and a corpse mutilator; an armed robber and a matriarch; drug dealers and escape artists - all dressed in skirts and high heels. Their exploits have become the stuff of legend over recent decades, often overshadowing the crimes of their less colourful male counterparts. A couple of them are irredeemably evil, others more misguided than malevolent. A number of them turned to crime because they loved the wrong men; others because they couldn't abide the boredom of a conventional, nine-to-five existence. They include a tragic figure who murdered all four of her children, a meat worker who turned her home into an abattoir, and a quiet librarian who pulled off Australia's only aircraft-assisted prison break-out. Brought together for the first time between the covers of one book are unforgettable figures like The Lesbian Vampire Killer, The Boot Bitch, The Matriarch, and The Angel of Death...

Most killers are men. But never turn your back on a woman. Murder, madness and maliciousness abound in this hangman's dozen of she-devils. Culled from over five hundred years of bloody history by crime writer and journalist Douglas Skelton, these pages uncover the mad, the bad and the dangerous to know. • Vengeful Queen Joan, who made her husband's assassins pay a fearful price for their treason. • Beautiful Jean Livingston, who bravely faced The Maiden after murdering her abusive husband. • Child killers Helen Torrence and Jean Waldie, who sold their victim to anatomists. • Baby farmer Jessie King, who dealt in flsh... and death. • These cases, together with a host of others, prove that women are far from the gentler sex. Most killers are men. But women are more deadly.

How much influence did notable wives have on the leading commanders in British military history? These women tend to be disregarded but, as Trina Beckett demonstrates in this revealing and thought-provoking study, their influence has often been profound. Taking examples from the eighteenth century to the Second World War, she uncovers a hidden dimension in the rise to prominence of some of Britains most famous soldiers and documents a series of fascinating relationships between powerful men and equally powerful women.Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, and Dorothy, Countess Haig are perhaps the most famous examples of wives who played important roles in their husbands brilliant careers. However, sometimes the lives of leading commanders would be hindered as well as helped by their wives. Paulina Wood proved such a disastrous hostess that she almost destroyed the career of Sir Evelyn Wood, and Lord Roberts reputation for jobbery owed much to his wife Noras constant interference in appointments.Trina Becketts perceptive and absorbing case studies reveal much about the women whose lives she portrays and the contribution they made to their distinguished husbands military careers.

George Fraser is a lonely man, and a bored man. But he has exciting dreams. In his dreams, he lives in a thrilling world of gangsters, guns, fast cars and beautiful women. And of course, in his dreams, he is the toughest gangster of them all. George Fraser prefers his dream world to his real, ordinary life so he begins to boast about it, pretending that he is, in fact, a hardened and ruthless gangster. But George Fraser boasts to the wrong people and suddenly his dream world becomes all too real.

Why are English women so good at murder? Among the books which have survived for more than half a century, always in print and always in demand, are the murder mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and other women writers. Yet their male competitors are mostly forgotten. What is it about these womens' work that has kept it alive? And what was it about the authors that gave them such violent or cunning imaginations, always hidden behind the most respectable of facades? In this book, first published in 1981, Jessica Mann brings the perception of a fellow crime writer to her investigation of her predecessors' lives and work. She discusses the changes in the mystery form over the years, and its enduring worldwide popularity, in a book that was described by one critic as "e;obligatory reading for any reader of crime fiction"e;, and of which another wrote "e;I cannot recall a better work of criticism devoted to the crime story."e;

As a naked captive in a cold, dark cellar (see Abducted and Imprisoned), Roger has spent the longest week of his life suffering as he has never suffered before. And now things are about to get even worse. The beatings, the hard labour, the worse-than-prison food… all that has been hard to bear. But now he is put to work upstairs — tarted up as a sissy maid!