Introduction -- On the page. A "horrible lust for living blood" : supernatural female murderers in nineteenth-century literature -- A comparative reading of Mona Caird's The wing of Azrael (1889) and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1892) -- She hid it well : female serial killers in American hard-boiled detective fiction -- Speculative biographies : representing the lives of historical murdering women -- The murdering woman in a Chinese/Taiwanese cultural context -- The bodies of Lizzie Borden -- On the screen. Increasingly monstrous representation of real female killers in American cinema : I want to live! (Robert Wise, 1958) and Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003) -- "Ki-ki-ki Ma-ma-ma" : maternal virtue and Mrs. Voorhees -- Women on death row : documentary film and the cultural politics of identity -- Lethal ladies : the stars of John Waters' Female trouble and Serial mom -- The birth of the female youth rampage shooter -- Women who kill : Law & order, Dexter & The wire -- On the stage. Killing a husband : Alice Arden and her accomplices on the early modern stage -- "There's so much I want to tell her" : Sophie Treadwell's Machinal and the transference of femininity -- Sheila's deposition, 1997 -- Another day in court : women playwrights -- The murdering mother in Marina Carr's plays.