Showing results by author "Alana Sanchez" in All Categories

When poisoned chocolates spread terror through Victorian Brighton, suspicion fell on no one — until it fell on Christiana Edmunds. Respectable, intelligent, and outwardly composed, Edmunds defied every expectation of a criminal. Her case forced Victorian England to confront uncomfortable questions about obsession, insanity, and female violence. The Chocolate Poisoner is a gripping true crime history of a woman who reasoned carefully, acted deliberately, and was silenced for the rest of her life.

In 1880s Britain, the chemist’s shop stood at the centre of a quiet revolution. Behind its polished counter were the substances that eased pain, soothed nerves, and saved lives — and the same substances that could quietly kill. As pharmacy professionalised and poison laws tightened, Victorian society struggled to balance access with safety, privacy with accountability, and relief with risk. The Victorian Chemist explores the uneasy coexistence of medicine and poison in an age of rapid chemical progress. Through regulation, scandal, courtroom testimony, and everyday trade, this book ...

In 1895, Bridget Cleary was killed by those closest to her. Convicted she had been taken by fairies and replaced by a changeling, her death has long been misremembered as folklore. In truth, it was the result of sustained domestic violence, collective belief, and a legal system that failed to protect her. Drawing on contemporary trial records, newspaper accounts, and social history, The Burning of Bridget Cleary strips away myth to examine how power, belief, and authority converged to erase a woman who resisted submission. This is not a story about superstition. It is a true-crime ...

In a world where women were caregivers, where death among the poor was expected. Mary Ann Cotton became respectable. She was a nurse, a wife, a mother. And while she comforted, she poisoned. Arsenic and Respectability is a precise, unnerving portrait of a society where poisoning was easier concealed than suspected.

A boarding house promised safety. Inside, people disappeared. In Sacramento, Dorothea Puente took in vulnerable tenants — elderly, disabled, and isolated — then quietly redirected their benefits and erased them from view. For years, the system accepted her explanations. Then bodies were found buried behind the house. The Boarding House is a chronological account of the Dorothea Puente case, separating record from rumour and restoring the victims to the centre of the story. A true-crime manuscript about greed, control, and what happens when disappearance becomes normal.

The Maid of Orléans is a historical autobiography told in the imagined voice of Joan of Arc. Drawing closely on trial records, letters, and contemporary testimony, this book traces her life from Domrémy to Orléans, from coronation at Reims to trial and execution at Rouen. Written with restraint and reverence, it presents Joan not as legend or martyr alone, but as a young woman of faith, courage, and human doubt whose obedience altered the course of France. This is the story of how her voice was condemned, silenced, and—years later—vindicated.

London, 1886. A husband dies in a rented room in Pimlico. Chloroform is found in his stomach. Adelaide Bartlett was accused of murdering her husband, Thomas Edwin Bartlett, in one of the most perplexing poison cases of the Victorian era. The medical evidence revealed a lethal quantity of chloroform — yet no clear explanation of how it had been administered. At the Old Bailey, expert witnesses clashed. The marriage was dissected. A minister’s involvement deepened suspicion. But suspicion is not proof. Acquitted in April 1886, Adelaide Bartlett walked free. The question of how chloroform ...

The true story of Belle Gunness, America's most deadly female serial killer. To her neighbours, in early 1900's Indiana, Belle Gunness seemed like a pious widow searching for a new husband on her secluded farm. In truth, she was luring unsuspecting men from across the country with promises of love. Her name was Belle exposes the brutal yet gripping reality of a woman who murdered without remorse - in a case more terrifying than fiction.

In late-Victorian London, Minnie Pheby became a scandal: a young woman accused of burglary at a time when breaking into houses was considered a man’s crime. Branded by the press as the “lady burglar”, she was hunted, punished, and turned into a cautionary tale. Catwoman of West London reconstructs her story from surviving records — and reveals what her crimes exposed about class, gender, and the fragile promise of the Victorian home.

In the desolate plains of Kansas, Kate Bender became a name whispered with fear. But there is more to a woman than a crime. Now she tells her own story - the choices, the darkness, and bestrewn road to survival. Evil is not just born. It is made. And some lines were never meant to be crossed.

London made her notorious. History made her a legend. In the crowded, dangerous streets of early modern London, Mary Frith defied every rule meant to keep women silent, modest, and unseen. Known to the city as Moll Cutpurse, she strode through taverns and theatres in men’s clothing, smoked in public, moved among thieves and brokers, and scandalized authorities who could not decide whether to punish her, fear her, or profit from her fame. But Moll was more than a criminal curiosity. She was a public woman in a world that wanted women contained. Condemned by moralists, rebuked by the church...

Paris. The late reign of Louis XIV. A death that should have been ordinary. On 31 July 1672, a man is found dead in his Paris rooms—and an inventory opens a locked cassette that should never have been opened. Inside: “diverse vials” and nine letters linked to Marie-Madeleine d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers. In the official account, those letters point to an unthinkable claim: that a noblewoman poisoned her own father (1666) and two brothers (1670). And the vials? “Virulent poisons” said to leave little trace—perfect for a world where illness already looked like death. What ...

In July 1895, a quiet house in Plaistow became the centre of one of Victorian England’s most disturbing domestic cases. When a mother was found dead upstairs and her two sons continued living below, the story shocked the nation—not for its violence alone, but for what followed: silence, routine, and days lived beneath a locked door. The Plaistow Case reconstructs the events of that summer and traces their long aftermath, from the courtroom at the Old Bailey to institutions, emigration, war, and adulthood. Grounded in historical records and contemporary accounts, this narrative examines ...

A woman with a gun. A federal conviction. A sentence the system could not sustain. In 1899, Pearl Hart took part in one of the last stagecoach robberies in the American West. The crime was brief, poorly planned, and quickly punished. What followed was not. Convicted under federal law and sent to Yuma Territorial Prison, Hart became an administrative problem the justice system had not prepared for: a notorious female offender confined inside an institution built for men. Within months, the punishment imposed with public certainty began to unravel behind the scenes. The Stagecoach Robbery is ...

In October 1888, a gunshot shattered the fragile order of a young frontier town. When a North-West Mounted Police constable forced his way into a notorious Edmonton brothel, the woman behind the door refused to yield. The shot that followed wounded a Mountie—and exposed a system built on tolerated vice, selective enforcement, and silence. Big Nelly Webb, a madam operating at the edges of legality, became the centre of a public scandal that threatened police authority, unsettled civic respectability, and forced a courtroom to confront an uncomfortable truth: sometimes the law is the danger...

The Infirmary Ward takes readers inside the workhouse infirmaries of 19th-century England and Wales, where sickness and poverty collided under the Poor Law. Drawing on official records, inspection reports, and contemporary accounts, this book explores how care was delivered to the poorest and most vulnerable: the sick, the elderly, women in childbirth, children, and those deemed “incurable.” It examines daily life in the wards, medical treatment, nursing, diet, discipline, and the moral assumptions that shaped who deserved comfort and who did not. More than a history of medicine, The ...

In early nineteenth-century Leeds, fear was common and answers were scarce. Mary Bateman sold both. Branded the “Yorkshire Witch”, she promised cures and protection, drawing desperate families into rituals, payments, and obedience. Then a woman died — and the story turned from superstition to murder. The Yorkshire Witch: The Mary Bateman Case is a chronological account grounded in the historical record, separating provable fact from legend while restoring the victims to the centre of the narrative. A true-crime manuscript of fraud, belief, and poison hidden in the domestic world.

In London's working class district, the Forty Elephants, moved unseen. This all-female gang operated for decades with adept coordination and ruthless consistency. Outsmarting department stores, confounding police, and defying expectations in a city that never, never, never saw them coming.

A woman was starved to death in her own home — surrounded by people who chose not to stop it. In Victorian England, Harriet Staunton died slowly from starvation while living under the control of her husband and his family. There were no blows, no weapons, and no single moment of violence — only confinement, deprivation, and sustained neglect. The Penge Murder reconstructs Harriet’s life, inheritance, marriage, and death using contemporary records, inquest evidence, and medical understanding of the period. It examines how domestic authority, gendered assumptions, and collective silence...

Darling thought the curse that once claimed her had been broken. She was wrong. Pregnant and newly married, Darling begins to still again — not as a relapse, but as an evolution. As her body slows, the world around her adapts. Mannequins move when necessary. Silence becomes communication. Protection becomes instinct. As external pressure closes in and the past resurfaces, Darling, her husband John, their friend Ben, and the creations she brought into the world must act as a single system — not driven by fear, but by care. Inheritance of Stillness is a quiet, unsettling novel about love ...