Bad Girls Do It!: An Encyclopedia of Female Murderers

Jack the Ripper may be more notorious, but while he was busy killing five prostitutes in the alleyways of Victorian London, another Victorian murderer, Jane Toppan, was brought in on charges of having killed close to 100 people in Connecticut. Toppan said in court, "That is my ambition, to have killed more people--more helpless people--than any man or woman who has ever lived." Bad Girls Do It! has a jocular title and cover illustration, and Michael Newton (author of Hunting Humans) occasionally indulges in macabre humor.

Nonetheless, these 182 case histories of female multiple murderers are packed with well-researched details. You will read about "angels of death" (nurses who kill), "black widows," lethal landladies, and murderous moms. Many of them are little known, such as Rachal David, a religious fanatic who tossed her seven children off an 11th-story hotel balcony in Salt Lake City in 1978, while a screaming crowd watched from below.