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by Harold Schechter (Author)
The shocking story of one of the most notorious female serial killers in American history from "an author who shows real mastery of the true crime genre" (NPR).
In 1891, Jane Toppan, a proper New England matron, embarked on a profession as a private nurse. Selfless and good-natured, she worked for some of Boston's most prominent families, but they had no idea what they were welcoming into their homes. Her dark past of tragedy, abuse, and mental illness was carefully hidden. No one who knew Jane as a nurse had any idea that she was morbidly obessed with autopsies, or that she conducted her own after-hours experiments on patients, deriving sexual satisfaction in their slow, agonizing deaths from poison. Self-schooled in the art of murder, Jane was just beginning her career as the most prolific domestic fiend of the nineteenth century.Author Biography
Harold Schechter is Professor Emeritus at Queens College, where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism for forty-two years. His essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and many more. An esteemed true crime historian, he has written the definitive accounts of some of America's most infamous murderers, including the nonfiction books Fatal, Fiend, Bestial, Deviant, Deranged, Depraved, and The Serial Killers File. He is the editor of the Library of America volume, True Crime: An American Anthology. He has twice been a finalist for an Edgar Award. His most recent books include Butcher's Work: True Crime Tales of American Murder and Madness and Murderabilia: A History of Crime in 100 Objects. In addition to his work in narrative nonfiction, Schechter is the author of an acclaimed series of detective novels based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. He lives with his family in New York.
