Schooled in the ancient beliefs of the Breton people by her mother, the beautiful Hélène grows up feeling detached from the nineteenth-century world around her and yet destined for a terrible vocation: to do the work of l'Ankou, death's henchman. Beginning with the demise of her very own mama, she leaves a trail of devastation with the special soups and cakes she makes – those who taste them never recover. Jean Teulé brings his unique blend of imagination and historical insight to a novel that is both an upbeat portrait of nineteenth-century provincial French life and a startling chronicle of a decades-long killing spree carried out by the most notorious female poisoner in history.

A true story. Tuesday 16 August 1870, Alain de Money, makes his way to the village fair. He plans to buy a heifer for a needy neighbour and find a roofer to repair the roof of the barn of a poor acquaintance. He arrives at two o'clock. Two hours later, the crowd has gone crazy; they have lynched, tortured, burned and eaten him. How could such a horror be possible? With frightening precision, Jean Teule reconstructs each step of one of the most shameful stories in the history of nineteenth-century France.