THE DEADLY SPINSTER. THE VAMPIRE COUNTESS. THE DRAGON LADY. Were these women as wicked as history tells us-or just doomed to be misunderstood?

Prim, middle-aged and reserved, New England spinster Lizzie Borden was the epitome of Victorian respectability-until she was arrested and tried for the horrific hatchet killing of her wealthy parents. In war-torn Hungary, peasants and nobles alike whispered that Countess Erzsébet Báthory's quest for blood and beauty had transformed her into a monster. And, rising from concubine to monarch, Empress Dowager Cixi dominated 19th century China as rumors of her ambition, cunning and cruelty spread throughout the Western world.

A collection of nonfiction novellas, THE INFAMOUS WOMEN OF HISTORY ANTHOLOGY, Volume II combines biography, history and pop culture studies to examine why these three fascinating women are still celebrated and condemned in film, television, theater and music. Always choosing legend over fact and myth over reality, we repeatedly depict them as icons of feminine wickedness to be imitated, but never duplicated. Whether truly guilty or not, these three women defied conventions and made history-but for all the wrong reasons.

THE INFAMOUS WOMEN OF HISTORY ANTHOLOGY, Volume II contains eBooks 4-6 of The Infamous Women of History Series:

THE DEADLY SPINSTER: Lizzie Borden

THE VAMPIRE COUNTESS: Erzsébet Báthory

THE DRAGON LADY: Empress Dowager Cixi

[Neeraja Viswanathan is an attorney, author (The Street Law Handbook) and journalist. She who loves histories, mysteries and film and blogs about movies adapted from mystery novels at MysteryOnScreen.com]

Cover design and illustrations by Hampton Lamoureux (https: //www.ts95studios.com/)