From the author of The Dark Queens, an exhilarating reclamation of what really happened to the most prolific murderess believed to have ever lived.

There have long been whispers, coming from the castle; from the village square; from the dark woods. The great lady-a countess, from one of Europe's oldest families-is a vicious killer. When the king's men force their way into her manor house, she has blood on her hands, caught in the act of murdering yet another of her maids. She is walled up in a tower and never seen again, except in the uppermost barred window, where she broods over the countryside, cursing all those who dared speak up against her.

Told and retold in manifold languages, the legend of the Blood Countess has consumed cultural imaginations around the world, for centuries-yet none of it is true. Despite claims that Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed as many as 650 girls, new evidence suggests it was she who was the victim of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns known to history. A confident, diplomatic woman leader in 17th century Hungary, Bathory proved too progressive for an era descending into anti-scientific, reactionary darkness. With the breathlessness of a whodunit, Shelley Puhak traces the Countess's downfall in all its tragic drama, unfurling, for the first time, the audacious plot concocted by her male rivals. An incandescent work of true crime and feminist history, The Blood Countess reveals just how far we will go to destroy a woman in power.