Margeurite Steinheil has been born into a middle-class family and trapped in a marriage to a failed artist twenty years her senior. But with a nervy plan, she takes elite men as lovers, seeking to charm her way into French high society: a real-life femme fatale playing a dangerous game.
In the U.S., among the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age is Mrs. Frank Leslie, a woman who ran the country’s largest publishing company while taking lovers and marrying four times.
Hear the true stories of these women, written by Besty Prioleau in Diamonds and Deadlines and Sarah Horowitz in The Red Widow.
This livestream is part of the 2024 Virginia Festival of the Book.
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