"During all those years when everyone wanted me to tell them...how I came to fire that shot, I never wanted to talk. Now I think I do..." Agnes Dempster - young, beautiful, and accused of murder. Vermont, 1890. After an unhappy childhood, Agnes Dempster turns her back on her family and escapes to the city to begin a new life. There she meets Frank Holt, a local stonecutter, a man who captures her imagination and opens her eyes to an entirely different world. They begin a relationship, but over time Agnes becomes more dependent on Frank and this soon becomes an obsession - a dangerous one. And when she discovers her beloved is not as perfect as the image she had created of him, the cracks in her already fragile psyche begin to deepen. He is a betrayer, a man who will never make her happy. And as her life spirals out of control Agnes is propelled into a state of barely-controlled madness; a madness that leads to a chaotic and destructive resolution which will affect her and those around her for the rest of their lives...

"During all those years when everyone wanted me to tell them...how I came to fire that shot, I never wanted to talk. Now I think I do..." Agnes Dempster - young, beautiful, and accused of murder. Vermont, 1890. After an unhappy childhood, Agnes Dempster turns her back on her family and escapes to the city to begin a new life. There she meets Frank Holt, a local stonecutter, a man who captures her imagination and opens her eyes to an entirely different world. They begin a relationship, but over time Agnes becomes more dependent on Frank and this soon becomes an obsession - a dangerous one. And when she discovers her beloved is not as perfect as the image she had created of him, the cracks in her already fragile psyche begin to deepen. He is a betrayer, a man who will never make her happy. And as her life spirals out of control Agnes is propelled into a state of barely-controlled madness; a madness that leads to a chaotic and destructive resolution which will affect her and those around her for the rest of their lives…

Before she goes to America, the Polish Jew Anya who has escaped several times during World War II, always searches for her little girl, given to Gentiles at the start of the war.

When Edna marries Dr. John Steele, she embarks on a lifetime adventure of anguish, loss, courage, and love.

A true crime account and analysis of a California housewife’s murder of her husband and the revealing trial that followed. In October 2002, Susan Polk, the soft-spoken mother of three teenage boys, was arrested for stabbing her husband and former therapist, Dr. Felix Polk, to death. Three years later she was tried for first degree murder, choosing to act as her own attorney in a trial that rapidly devolved into one of the most outrageous media circuses in modern history. To a crowded courtroom, Susan Polk presented her defense—a bizarre story of unethical therapies, abuse, repressed memories, and satanic rituals—and, in doing so, exposed her madness. Carol Pogash was there. Seduced by Madness is the remarkably compelling, profoundly disturbing true story of the severe dysfunction of an affluent American family, as told by the leading journalist who worked the case. It is a spellbinding re-creation of a troubled life, a marriage, a murder, and a terrifying, inexorable descent into madness. Praise for Seduced by Madness “While the background is fascinating, the coverage of the trial is mesmerizing. Pogash takes the characters . . . and creates an edge-of-your-seat excitement. For fans of true crime, psychology, courtroom drama and truth-is-stranger-than fiction, this is a triumph.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)