Full name: The Bloody Countess: Atrocities of Erzsebet Bathory

Author: Valentine Penrose Year: 1962 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Biographies, Non Fiction, True crime, Horror Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781840680560 9780983884224 1840680563 0983884226

Descended from one of the most ancient aristocratic families of Europe, Erzsebet Bathory bore the psychotic aberrations of centuries of intermarriage. From adolescence she indulged in sadistic lesbian fantasies, where only the spilling of a woman's blood could satisfy her urges. By middle age, she had regressed to a mirror-fixated state of pathological necro-sadism involving witchcraft, torture, blood-drinking, cannibalism and, inevitably, wholesale slaughter. These years witnessed a reign of cruelty unsurpassed in the annals of mass murder, with the Countess' depredations on the virgin girls of the Carpathians leading to some 650 deaths. Her many castles were equipped with chambers where she would hideously torture and mutilate her victims, becoming a murder factory where hundreds of girls were killed and processed for the ultimate, youth-giving ritual: the bath of blood.The Bloody Countess is Valentine Penrose's disturbing case history of a female psychopath, a chillingly lyrical account beautifully translated by Alexander Trocchi (author of Cain's Book), which has an unequalled power to evoke the decadent melancholy of doomed, delinquent aristocracy in a dark age of superstition. Similar books: Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir Mary Tudor by H. F. M. Prescott Nelson and Emma by Roger Hudson Arbella by Sarah Gristwood The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte by Robert Asprey Cook by Nicholas Thomas Queen Anne by Anne Somerset Genghis Khan by Harold Lamb Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones The Spy's Son by Bryan Denson H. H. Holmes by Hourly History The Map Thief by Michael Blanding The Year of Fear by Joe Urschel Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese Archie and Amelie by Donna M. Lucey The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer