The Blood Countess
Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Feb 17, 2026
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- $16.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the national bestseller The Dark Queens, an incandescent work of true crime and feminist history about the woman alleged to be the world's most prolific female serial killer.
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. Some even say she bathes in the blood of her victims. 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 many languages, the legend of the Blood Countess has consumed cultural imaginations around the world. But despite claims that Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed as many as 650 girls, some have wondered if the Countess was herself a victim- of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns known to history. So, was Elizabeth Bathory a monster, a victim, or a bit of both? With the breathlessness of a whodunit, drawing upon new archival evidence and questioning old assumptions, Shelley Puhak traces the Countess's downfall, bringing to life an assertive woman leader in a world sliding into anti-scientific, reactionary darkness-a world where nothing is ever as it seems. In this exhilarating narrative, Puhak renders a vivid portrait of history's most dangerous woman and her tumultuous time, revealing just how far we will go to destroy a woman in power.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This striking account from poet and historian Puhak (The Dark Queens) separates the true story of Hungarian noblewoman Elizabeth Bathory from her blood-soaked mythology. For centuries, Bathory (1560–1614) has featured in popular folklore as a vampiric figure, a result of the gruesome crime she was imprisoned for in 1610—the torture and murder of 650 women—as well as embellishments added in later written accounts of her supposed exploits, such as that she bathed in virgins' blood. Scouring the archives, Puhak instead finds Bathory, an outspoken widow from an influential family, to have been betrayed via "a remarkably successful disinformation campaign" by male religious leaders and fellow nobles, including her own in-laws, who sought to usurp her power. The author meticulously refutes the charges against Bathory, including the list of 650 victims (likely cribbed from "a popular true-crime story") and the term "carnifex" applied to her in letters between two Lutheran pastors, which probably meant "someone who was not fasting properly" rather than "butcher" as her detractors asserted. The author also intriguingly hypothesizes that the accusations willfully misconstrued women's medical care as evil. Bathory, she suggests, employed female herbalists who used "plant-based medicine" to treat local women's ailments; thus, alleged torture victims being "rolled in nettles" were actually patients being treated for "inflammatory conditions." It's a stunning feminist reconsideration of one of history's most reviled villainesses.
