The Poisoners

The Poisoners by Marjorie Bowen is about the newly hired lieutenant Charles Desgrez and a group of female poisoners who are conducting witchcraft and poisoning members of high society to influence King Louis XIV's reign. Excerpt: "In the year 1676 Madame de Brinvilliers was executed in Paris for the murders of her father, her two brothers, and a sister. It was known that she had procured the mysterious poison that she had employed through the agency of one Sainte-Croix, who, in his turn, had received it from an Italian, Exile, whom he had met when both these scoundrels had been imprisoned in the Bastille for minor offenses."