In Fatal Females, investigative psychologist and former police profiler Micki Pistorius examines the minds and motives of women who kill. Throughout history the view seems to have prevailed that it is not in women's nature to commit violent crime, but Pistorius shows that this is not in fact the case. Women, givers of life, are indeed capable of ruthlessly taking life. She examines more than fifty documented cases of South African female killers, categorised according to the nature of the crime - for example, infanticide, spree killings, stalkers, poisoners - and she presents her new hypothesis to explain the psychology of that rare individual, the female serial killer.

A groundbreaking and provocative look at how violent women have been represented in literature, plays, film, and performance Fatal Women builds a complex and original theory of how the shadow of the lesbian animates representations of violent women, from the Victorian novel to films depicting women who kill. Starting from the historical link between criminality and sexual deviancy, Lynda Hart critiques constructions of gender, race, class, sexualities, and the cultural politics of the 1990s. Her introductory chapter constructs a theory of female violence across the discourses of sexology, criminology, and psychoanalysis. Subsequent chapters detail this theory in the Victorian novel and stage sensation Lady Audley’s Secret; Frank Wedekind’s Lulu Plays, which introduced the “invert” to the European stage; the films Thelma and Louise, Mortal Thoughts, and Basic Instinct; the political intersection of race and gender in Single White Female; the performance art of Karen Finley in the context of the censorship debates; the fate of Aileen Wuornos, dubbed the first “female serial killer” by the FBI; and the Split Britches’ performance Lesbians Who Kill. A major contribution to lesbian theory and cultural studies, Fatal Women is certain to be read widely by scholars, students, and anyone interested in the politics of representation.

Gender, Supernatural Beings, and the Liminality of Death: Monstrous Males/Fatal Females examines representations of the supernatural dead to demonstrate shifts in the manifestation of gender. Including readings of East Asian detectives/cyborgs, Iranian vampires, and African zombies, among others, This collection offers a multi-faceted look at myth, legend, and popular culture representations of the gendered supernatural from a broad range of international contexts. The contributors show that, as creatures pass through the liminal space of death, their new supernatural forms challenge cultural conceptions of gender, masculinity, and femininity.

Tony Rawlins does not think he is a stupidly gullible man. Forlorn and desperate to extricate himself from the aftereffects of a bad marriage, he attempts to find romance by answering a provocative personal ad. Unfortunately, Rawlins is about to find himself victimized by the woman he had hoped would cure his loneliness. Now she has accused him of killing her husband. Innocent but convicted on her convincing testimony, Rawlins heads to jail. Soon, and much to his relief, new evidence is uncovered that casts his accuser's story in doubt. She vanishes, and the conviction is set aside until she can be found. Vindicated at least for the time being, Rawlins returns to work where he unwittingly uncovers an illegal business that soon reveals the real reason for the murder. But now others are turning up dead-including the woman who accused him of murder. In a mystery trilogy of novellas filled with surprising twists and turns, Rawlins must decide who he can trust-and who he cannot-as he attempts to untangle himself from a dangerous and very determined web of fatal females.

Incarnations of fatal women, or femmes fatales, recur throughout the works of women writers in the Romantic period. Adriana Craciun demonstrates how portrayals of femmes fatales or fatal women played an important role in the development of Romantic women's poetic identities and informed their exploration of issues surrounding the body, sexuality and politics. Craciun covers a wide range of writers and genres from the 1790s through the 1830s. She discusses the work of well-known figures including Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as lesser-known writers like Anne Bannerman. By examining women writers' fatal women in historical, political and medical contexts, Craciun uncovers a far-ranging debate on sexual difference. She also engages with current research on the history of the body and sexuality, providing an important historical precedent for modern feminist theory's ongoing dilemma regarding the status of 'woman' as a sex.

One of today’s most original thinkers on gender offers a provocative take on the current feminist movement, exploring “desire as the force shaping our identifies, the paradoxes of liberation politics, and her own gender transition” (Bookforum). “[Females] is always smart, sometimes sincere, and unpredictable about when it will pinch your arm or clutch its nails around your heart.” —Vice Everyone is female, and everyone hates it. Females is Andrea Long Chu’s genre-defying investigation into sex and lies, desperate artists and reckless politics, the smothering embrace of gender and the punishing force of desire. Drawing inspiration from a forgotten play by Valerie Solanas—the woman who wrote the SCUM Manifesto and shot Andy Warhol—Chu aims her searing wit and surgical intuition at targets ranging from performance art to psychoanalysis, incels to porn. She even has a few barbs reserved for feminists like herself. Each step of the way, she defends the indefensible claim that femaleness is less a biological state and more a fatal existential condition that afflicts the entire human race—men, women, and everyone else. Or maybe she’s just projecting. A thrilling new voice who has been credited with launching the “second wave” of trans studies, Chu shows readers how to write for your life, baring her innermost self with a morbid sense of humor and a mordant kind of hope.

Woman UP! is the go-to resource for women who want to finally get out of their own way and get ahead in their careers. Author Aimee Cohen’s passionate approach is “like combining your best girlfriend and an elite career expert...in a powerful purse-sized package!” Her insights are a product of more than 20 years of experience and a nearly 100% success rate helping hundreds of clients. Woman UP! conveys a powerful and practical message that exposes seven self-sabotaging behaviors that keep women from success. Using real-life examples, shared experiences, and Aimee’s own guilty confessions, Woman UP! delivers the sage advice every woman wishes she had at the start of her career: put on your big-girl panties and take control of your career. Come on, girls.. It’s time to Woman UP!