The Red Widow by Sarah Horowitz

AN UNFORGETTABLE PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN WHO BECAME ONE OF
THE MOST NOTORIOUS FIGURES OF HER DAY AND WHOSE
SCANDALOUS STORY SHEDS FASCINATING LIGHT NOT ONLY ON HER
OWN TUMULTUOUS TIME BUT OURS AS WELL." - HAROLD
SCHECHTER, AUTHOR OF Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Guinness,
Butcher of Men
Sex, corruption, and power: the rise and fall of the Red Widow of Paris
PARIS, 1889: Margeurite Steinheil is a woman with ambition. But having been
born into a middle-class family and trapped in a marriage to a failed artist
twenty years her senior, she knows her options are limited.
Determined to fashion herself into a new woman, Meg orchestrates a
scandalous plan with her most powerful resource: her body. Amid the dazzling
glamor, art, and romance of bourgeois Paris, she takes elite men as her
lovers, charming her way into the good graces of the rich and powerful. Her
ambitions, though, go far beyond becoming the most desirable woman in
Paris; at her core, she is a woman determined to conquer French high society.
But the game she plays is a perilous one: navigating misogynistic doublestandards, public scrutiny, and political intrigue, she is soon vaulted into
infamy in the most dangerous way possible.
A real-life femme fatale, Meg influences government positions and resorts to
blackmail - and maybe even poisoning - to get her way. Leaving a trail of
death and disaster in her wake, she earns the name the "Red Widow" for
mysteriously surviving a home invasion that leaves both her husband and
mother dead. With the police baffled and the public enraged, Meg breaks
every rule in the bourgeois handbook and becomes the most notorious
woman in Paris.
An unforgettable true account of sex, scandal, and murder, THE RED WIDOW
is the story of a woman determined to rise - at any cost.

Sourcebooks
On Sale: Oct 17/23
336 pages
9781728280332 • $26.99 • pb
Biography / Historical