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LADY KILLERS

DEADLY WOMEN THROUGHOUT HISTORY

Heavily researched and filled with gory details, a rare look at women who killed for pleasure.

A compendium of women serial killers through the ages.

“When we think about serial killers,” writes freelancer Telfer, “we think about men. Well, ‘man,’ actually—some vicious, twisted sociopath, working alone. He probably has a dreadful nickname…[which] is his brand, a nightmare name for a nightmare man whose victims are, more often than not, innocent women.” In her first book, however, the author compiles comprehensive biographies of more than a dozen women who were as vicious, coldblooded, and brutal as their male counterparts. These women took great pleasure, physically, emotionally, and sexually, in killing—their husbands and other men, their own children, and other women. Most often, they used poison to kill their victims, but some enjoyed, among other methods, brutal and bloody torture and throat cutting as a means to a deadly end. Telfer delves deeply into the role of the media in making these women notorious, and she analyzes how quickly they lost their stardom, fading into relative oblivion. She examines how physical attractiveness and sexuality played into each woman’s personal scenario and how each was branded or given a nickname depending on the violent nature of her crimes. As the author writes, “there’s something so seductive about the word ‘murderess.'" Telfer also explains how humor has been used to describe and counterbalance the atrocious acts these women performed. The book is well-researched and informative, but squeamish readers beware: Telfer doesn’t hide the grisly and gruesome details about what these women did to the people they murdered. For those interested in historical facts about a special group of sociopaths, the author offers an illuminating read on a subject that has not received much publicity, except during the time when each woman was finally apprehended.

Heavily researched and filled with gory details, a rare look at women who killed for pleasure.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-06-243373-2

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Awards & Accolades

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller


  • National Book Award Finalist

Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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